


Hooked Into Machine

by notlucy, Timeless_Anarchy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Breathplay, Bucky Barnes & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Bucky Barnes & Sam Wilson Friendship, Bucky Barnes Gets a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky and the mask, Bucky loves Steve so much, Conversations, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dissociation, Dissociation during sex, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Lack of Communication, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Steve Rogers, Recovery, Rope Bondage, Shibari, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson Friendship, Steve loves Bucky so much, Therapeutic Yoga with Natasha, Therapy, imagined self-harm, minor self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-17 14:20:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14190879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notlucy/pseuds/notlucy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Timeless_Anarchy/pseuds/Timeless_Anarchy
Summary: Recovery isn't linear - Steve's heard it a million times.  He never understood it until Bucky came home and got worse instead of better. Despite the doctors and the drugs. Despite Steve's best efforts to repair the broken parts.Bucky knows there's a malfunction; something gumming up the gears. Not Steve's fault - never Steve's fault. Easier to blame the bagels. Force a fix through unconventional maintenance.





	1. My hands are subjointed

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the MCU Kink Bang - notlucy wrote the words with inspiration from Timeless_Anarchy's incredible art, which will be featured in Chapter 7. Posting over the next two weeks, with the final chapter going up on April 15.

In retrospect, Bucky blamed the bagels.

Or, rather, he blamed the absence of the bagels. On account of him not buying them, which was really where the whole thing started. Sort of.  

“I thought you were getting bagels,” Steve said, glancing over to where Bucky was sitting at the breakfast table, reading the same three lines of newsprint over and over again. Steve looked nice. Smelled nice. Fresh out of the shower in a soft navy blue sweater and chinos, like he had somewhere important to be. _Did_ have somewhere important to be. Avengers business, not Bucky business. Ten o’clock, don’t be late.

Bucky stiffened, his muscles and his bones slotting into place as he braced for a strike that wouldn’t come. Steve didn’t hit. Didn’t reprimand. Bucky knew that. Tensed anyway.

Because he hadn’t gotten the bagels.

The grocery trip had seemed like a good idea when he’d talked it through with Doc. Doing something every day was important, said Doc. Leaving the house. Being around real people. Alive people. Not-Steve people.

He saw Doc two days a week, which meant five days to fill up with another activity. Five days multiplied by eight weeks since-he-started-seeing-Doc, nine-since-he-and-Steve-came-home-not-home.

Total: forty days of things.

Sometimes, all he could do was walk out the front door and stand on the stoop. The city too loud, the pavement shimmering like a mirage. If he stepped off, he’d get sucked down into the ground, and he’d be stuck, trapped there, with Steve walking over him every day but never knowing Bucky was there. Always thinking, what happened to Bucky? Bucky would be _useful_ , but he wouldn’t _be_.

On those days, it was easier to go back inside.

However, Doc liked progress, and Bucky liked showing her that he’d made some because he wanted to be better. Useful. A person. He had suggested the grocery trip because it seemed manageable - Steve could make a list, Bucky could walk the four blocks to the Whole Foods (as opposed to half foods, quarter foods, eighths and sixteenths?), buy the list, and come home. A pack mule, laden down with cloth bags.

Steve was big into cloth bags. Probably because he spent a lot of time saving the planet at work.

When he’d asked Steve to make the list, Steve gave him a look like he was proud but wouldn’t _tell_ Bucky he was proud, in case Bucky didn’t like it. Probably Bucky wouldn’t. Sam and Natasha didn’t care if Steve was proud of them, and Bucky was fine and normal, just like them.

Before the trip, he had spent the better part of an hour planning the optimal route - best sightlines, cover in case it was needed. Fewer civilians. Just in case, just in case, just in case, just in case…

Bucky had hidden the trickle of blood on his hand, where he’d scratched the mental loop into his skin. Broken skin and broken parts. The cuts never bled for long, gasket loosened, steam screaming out of him so he could breathe again.

Doc said it was an anxiety disorder. Doc said it was dissociation. De-person-ating.

Dumb. Bucky wasn’t a person. Not really. Nothing to de- there. Something to im-, sometimes. Impersonating a person.

But Doc was nice. Bucky couldn’t make her see, so he didn’t argue. Wasn’t her fault they’d pulled out his guts and left him with component parts outside his control. Vital systems not so vital.

Steve had come into the room, then, so he had stuck his finger in his mouth. Sucked off the blood. Taken his list and walked the optimal route to the big, ugly store. Smelled like money. Like he wasn’t supposed to be there because he didn’t have any and what he _did_ have went to keeping Steve healthy.

Only that was other-Bucky. Before Bucky. Before Steve. The memory not-his but his, and he hated other-Bucky down to the marrow in his bones.

The store had infinite choices. One million glass bottles, ten hundred thousand varieties of cheese. He wanted to stick his-not-his hand into the barrel of rolled oats to see if any of them would get stuck between the plates. Gum up the works. Didn’t do it. Had a list.

Maybe he’d gum up the works some other time if he ever had a plan to be spontaneous.

Four jars of peanut butter for the calories. No jelly - felt like clotted blood in his mouth and Steve had been turned off by the smell ever since Bucky puked his sandwich into the kitchen sink.

Box of protein bars. The kind without caramel because he didn’t like the way _that_ felt either.

Steve could still eat caramel because when Bucky puked _that_ up, Steve wasn’t home.

Cereal. Bran flakes because Steve was boring. Trix because Bucky liked the rabbit and when you liked very few things you latched on where you could.

Lentils, because they were going to make soup.

Meat, next. Funny how caramel and jelly made him retch but the meat encased in plastic held a strange sort of appeal. He approached a package of chicken and used his flesh thumb to poke it. Liked the way it squished, the pale, pink carcass dead and lifeless but pretty, too. He wanted to tear the package open with his teeth and eat the chicken raw. Juice dripping down his chin. Put real things inside. Dead things.

He picked up a package of ground beef instead. Ground beef had less personality.

Dairy next. Milk and eggs, the latter of which was problematic if he thought too long about baby chickens and their bones crunching under his teeth. But eggs weren’t baby chickens, they were pre-chickens, and as long as he ate them scrambled he liked them. Not fried, not hard-boiled. Definitely not poached. Too wriggly.

Milk was good. He liked it in his cereal.

The list said broccoli and Bucky realized Steve had written it in the order of the store. Like Steve knew how he’d navigate. The thought made him smile, and he ducked his head, not wanting anyone to see. Steve. _Steve_.

Got the broccoli. Celery and carrots for the soup. Steve had drawn a little cartoon carrot next to the word carrot. It had a hat on and everything, so Bucky figured he’d frame it and stick it on the wall.

The last item on the list was unexpected.

Bagels - 2 doz. assorted, from Nan’s

Nan’s wasn’t the fuck-off grocery store. Nan’s was the bakery on the corner one block away from their place and it didn’t have good sightlines and the route was _not_ optimal.

Bucky had been going to the grocery store. To do the grocery shopping. Just the grocery shopping.

(Other-Bucky’s memories reminded him that sometimes when Steve was small, they’d shopped butcher and baker and candlestick maker. Wasn’t fair, though. He wasn’t that Bucky so who the fuck said he should be held to the same standard?)

Bucky tore off the bottom of the list and shoved it deep into the trash can full of discarded produce. Slimy and wet, the wilted leaves sucking his hand in and making him gag. The smell of it was like dead things and when he pulled his hand back out, he couldn’t stand to look at it.

But if the bagel objective was in the trash, then he didn’t have to get the bagels.

So it had been fine.

Except now, Steve wanted a bagel for breakfast. And Bucky’s spine was holding tension like tug-of-war as he dug the fingers of his-not-his hand into the kitchen table and shook his head minutely.

“Oh,” Steve said, like he wasn’t going to sound disappointed even though he was. “That’s fine, pal. No big deal.”

He passed behind Bucky, brushing his shoulder. Leaned down to press a kiss to the top of his head.

Bucky flinched.

Steve froze. Bucky couldn’t see him, but he could feel him standing up, brow probably furrowed in that oh-I’m-just-concerned way, pinched and sad like Bucky’d just kicked four dozen puppies.

“Sorry,” said Steve.

The broken actuator that propelled Bucky forward could not comply. Refused to give Steve any comfort. Brain was just fine. Thinking fine. Screaming fine. _SorrySteveSorrySteveSorrySteveSorrySorrySORRY_

“I’ll be back tonight, probably around six,” Steve continued after an uncomfortably long pause. “I could get takeout. What do you…” He cut himself off. “How about gyros?”

Bucky’s shoulders slumped and he nodded, head falling forward, hair obscuring his face. It was easier when Steve picked.

“Yeah, alright.” Steve hesitated. Like he was going to touch Bucky again. Bucky wanted him to. Wouldn’t flinch. Would be happy. Steve reached for his bag instead. “Have a good day, Buck.”

Good days were relative.

Bucky remained at the table. He was on the verge of panic - that liminal zone where his body vibrated with something but not quite everything, throat fluttering but not closing; stomach roiling but not vomiting.

The other-Bucky was in his head again.

 

_“Hey, Stevie, wanna hear somethin’ impressive?”_

_“Nah.”_

_“A single seahorse can have two thousand babies.”_

_Steve looks up from the comic he’s been tracing, blinking at other-Bucky, “oh yeah?”_

_“Yeah,” other-Bucky grins. “You oughta hear what the married ones can do.”_

_Steve honks like a goose. Elbows knock together. Wrestling, maybe. Hands on other-Bucky’s skin as he pins him and crows over it._

 

Real-not-real. Bucky was looking through a viewfinder and seeing someone else’s past. Someone easier. Someone Steve liked better.

He bit back a sharp sob, scrubbing a hand across his face. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck.”

Steve wasn’t always in the other-Bucky’s memories. Mostly he was. He’d been in them more since Bucharest. Since Wakanda. Since coming home to Brooklyn. Bucky was _remembering_ but he wasn’t right. Wasn’t real. Bearings breaking down.

He stared at the back of his right hand, searching for the spring-loaded release. Wondering what would happen if he opened it up manually. Pried up the nail of his middle finger to catch the wire and peel back the skin until he could see how it worked underneath.

Tried it. Hissed deep when it hurt. Stopped. Closed his eyes and lost time, throat spasming, so he put a hand over his mouth and dragged in a deep breath through his nose.

It had been easier when there had been someone to maintain him. Oiling the gears, scrubbing him clean, cutting and reassembling. Storing him for later. Normal, everyday, routine maintenance.

Now, Steve wanted a different kind of normal and Doc said normal looked different for everyone but Bucky didn’t think it looked like this.

He’d never told Steve about maintenance. Mask on his face so he couldn’t breathe too deep or bite anyone because that happened sometimes. Arms strapped to his sides and legs bound together. Sometimes to a gurney. Sometimes to a table. Maintenance had _options_ but not choices. Bucky didn’t care. Hadn’t been his job to care. Just to be.

 

_The asset is lying on a cold, metal table. Can’t move. Doesn’t mind. Cold. Doesn’t mind. Naked. Doesn’t mind. There are two real men in the room. White Coat and suit._

_“Reconditioning.” White Coat says. “If it’s out of the freezer too long, it...” The asset cannot see the gesture White Coat makes._

_Doesn’t mind._

_“What, like it’s broken?” Suit replies._

_“Kind of. Gotta...bzzzt!...then put it away for a while.”_

_They’re laughing. The asset blinks. There’s a cage and then there isn’t a memory anymore_. _Doesn’t mind._

 

Losing those memories wasn’t so bad. Not like the memories from other-Bucky that come to him in fragments. The memories he isn’t in even though he can see that version of himself. Not _this_ himself. The asset memories didn’t matter but he’d been a better machine before. Now, every day mattered and he was malfunctioning. Breaking apart. Sometimes Steve saw and sometimes he didn’t but Bucky knew.

Knew it had to stop. Knew he ought to be smart and useful. Maintain himself since there was nobody there to do it for him. No cages or chairs now - he knew better. That was HYDRA shit and Bucky wasn’t HYDRA.

Had to create the new normal. The proper environment for routine maintenance.

Bucky had a room that was only his room where he was allowed to put whatever he liked. Squirreling away nuts for winter, Steve said, which was maybe one of the top ten stupidest things Steve ever said that Bucky liked a lot. He never used the room as a room. Slept in Steve’s bed every night.

The room was a place to hide things.  

Things Steve didn’t know about. Things he’d kept. Things he’d found. His tac gear. Stuff Shuri gave him to maintain his-not-his arm. The last mask.

That one mattered most.

After the helicarriers, when he had been least himself, he had gone to the Smithsonian and the bank vault. Had seen Steve’s face on the wall without understanding who he was. Had seen the chair up close. Had found the three masks that remained after Steve knocked the fourth off his face and saw him underneath.

The first, he had cracked in half where he stood, leaving the broken pieces on the floor of the vault.

The second, he had buried on the banks of the Potomac. Hoped it would find its way through the earth to the rotting corpse of Alexander Pierce. Attach itself to his face and revive him then suffocate him then revive then suffocate again and again for always. Until time wore away the flesh from his bones and left nothing but his screaming maw hidden underneath the black cage.

The third, he kept. Buried under the floorboards.

He pulled it out and studied it. Held it close to his face like a memory. Blinked and tried to picture himself in it. What he might look like. HYDRA hadn’t given him an abundance of mirrors. Probably they were afraid of what he’d do if he saw.

Bucky lifted the mask to his face and secured it behind his head. Wondered what it was made of. Strong, durable. Rigid and unyielding. Tightened the straps so it dug into his cheekbones.

How much pressure would it take, to grind those bones to dust? To cave his whole face in. Eyes rolling around in the detritus of his skull.

Bucky inhaled. Exhaled with a sob.

Could feel it digging in. Tightened the straps.

It was good. It was something. It wasn’t enough.  

He wasn’t _stupid_. Steve was the tactician but Bucky was the sniper. Could see things other people didn’t. Narrowing in on something infinitesimal and precise, then fucking obliterating it.

So: what was _it_ , precisely? The mask, yes. More than that, the _pressure_. The restriction. The way it was harder to breathe with the mask in place. Nobody cared if the asset was comfortable. Only the mission mattered. Fire the gun, clean the gun, put it away.

Put it away. Someplace small and dark where you kept things you weren’t using.

The coat closet in the hall was the smallest space in the house. Bucky had measured.

The tiny closet smelled like Steve. Like the leather of his jacket. The wool of his winter coat hanging there. Bucky wanted that coat. Reached out and touched the material that was rough and soft all at once, woven together into a texture he liked very much. He pulled it off the hanger and wrapped himself up in it.

It felt like Steve, anywhere the soft lining touched his skin.

Wasn’t enough touch. Next time he wouldn’t wear clothes. Next time he’d feel Steve everywhere. Keep Steve with him so Steve would never know what he did.

Bucky sat down on the ground and pulled his legs to his chest, wrapping his arm and his-not-his arm around them. Tucked his face against his knees so the mask dug in harder. So the air holes were covered and he had to fight to breathe

Found himself there. Inside himself. Bucky and other-Bucky. Who he was now and the asset he’d been before. Broken parts maintained.

He sat there for hours, wrapped up in Steve’s warmth and smell alongside the stuff of his nightmares. Kept track of time as best he could, counting the seconds and the minutes and the hours until enough time had gone by. Until he could lift his head and take in whole breaths again. Until he could stop thinking about the fucking bagels.

Maybe it wasn’t fair to blame the bagels.

He stood up and took the coat off, hanging it up and pressing a kiss to the sleeve before opening the closet door. The mask went back under the floorboards.

Bucky took a shower and found himself whistling as he wrapped up in a towel afterward. Looked in the mirror and wiped off the steam and knew he was himself. Made a funny face at his reflection, pleased when the reflection made it back. Felt his heart beating in his chest and knew that it was his real heart.

Maintenance. Simple as that.

When Steve got home at 6:09, Bucky was stretched out on the couch with a record on the turntable and a glass of ginger ale on the coffee table. He’d used a coaster because the table was new and he didn’t want to leave rings. Wanted nice things kept nice.

“Hi, Buck,” Steve said, peeking his head over the back of the couch like he might give Bucky a surprise. Like Bucky hadn’t heard him the moment he opened the gate.

Instead of an answer, Bucky held out his arms, which made Steve’s goofy face light up as he flopped his whole, big, cumbersome body over the back of the couch, landing on top of Bucky with an “oof.”

Bucky feigned discomfort, splaying out beneath him. A starfish with three wiggly arms. “Squished me,” he grunted.

“What? Who’s that? Someone under there?”

“Nah, nobody here but us cockroaches.”

“Huh.” Steve pulled back, looked down at him, leaned in and kissed the tip of his nose. “Maybe I oughta call the exterminator.”

“Why?” Bucky squirmed, running his socked toe along the outside of Steve’s calf, pulling his Important Chinos up as he went. “Already squished me.”

“Impeccable logic, pal.”

“Cause I’m smarter than you.”

Steve smirked, leaning down and kissing Bucky properly, mouths mashed together and Bucky could _really_ feel that. Feel the way Steve’s tongue licked his teeth and how Steve’s bottom lip was good for biting.

“Hey.” Steve pulled back from the kiss. “You go outside today?”

Bucky rolled his eyes. Didn’t bother answering.

“Thought not. Let’s take a walk before dinner. I got gyros, but they’ll keep.”

Bucky didn’t grumble much. They took a walk around the block. Held hands - real hands - Bucky with his hoodie pulled up over his head, Steve with those dumb fake glasses he wore like people might not know he was Captain Fuck-off America.

They saw three dogs - one husky, one mutt, and one labrador. Bucky wanted to lie down on the street and let the dogs jump all over him, but that wasn’t a ‘normal’ thing to do, so he didn’t. Steve kissed the back of his hand when they got home.

They ate the gyros which weren’t _too_ cold and Steve kept kissing him all the way to bed.

Sex was good. Better than usual. Bucky had cracked the code. Figured out the trick.

Self-maintenance was simple, so he kept it up. Created a new normal: when Steve went out, Bucky pulled out the mask and put himself away. Steve was happy. Doc didn’t have to know.

A month and a half into Bucky’s new routine, he was curled up in the closet, drifting away to that foggy, muzzy, half-conscious place, when he heard a squeak. A thump. Two clicks and footsteps.

Front door opening.

So: panic.


	2. Who just lacks my perspectives

Tuesdays were good.

A simplistic statement, but on the whole Tuesdays had settled into a comfortable routine. Funny - Steve had never been a creature of habit before, but habits came easier now that he had Bucky. Had a home. Had a life.

Yeah, Tuesdays were good. Tuesdays he got to train with Peter and the other young recruits at the tower Tony had un-leased from its lessors. There was something invigorating about the sheer, unbridled enthusiasm with which those kids faced everything Steve threw at them. Literally and figuratively.

Peter especially. Steve was awfully fond of Peter, even if he _was_ from Queens.

“He reminds you of yourself,” Bucky had remarked, post-reintegration. Post-reunification. Post-the-other-bullshit he’d had to do to get himself and Bucky back into the country and settled into a life together.

“He does _not_.”

Bucky had shrugged. Grinned his manic grin. Cuffed Steve on the shoulder. “Yeah, alright.”

The thing of it was, Peter didn’t remind Steve of himself. Peter was Steve in another life. A kid who’d been handed a pile of shit and, instead of making a meal of it, had turned it into something better. Turned himself into someone better despite the circumstances of that transformation. All that anger and resentment under the skin manifesting as relentless curiosity and enthusiasm. Steve had been a willing volunteer, then he’d willingly fucked it up.

All of which meant that Steve liked training Peter. Liked envisioning a future where maybe Bucky came to the tower on Tuesdays, too. Harnessed some of those raw nerves and focused them - narrowing the scope, same as he used to.

They’d get there. Things were getting better; Bucky was improving. Maybe the goddamn therapist was good for something.

“Big plans?” Natasha asked, tossing him a towel.

Steve sat down on the bench, draped the towel over his neck and bent to tie his shoes. “You know me,” he replied. “Dance card’s always full.”

“Uh huh.” She reached for her water, taking a swig and wiping the back of her mouth with one hand. “That why you’re skipping the Tony meeting?”

Steve grinned. Gave her a little salute as he pushed himself to his feet. Fuck the Tony meeting. Every Tuesday - the worst part of Tuesday - there was a Tony meeting. Bunch of suits in a room checking up on him. Making sure he was playing by the rules. It wasn’t Tony’s fault. Hell, Steve and Tony were fine these days. Mostly. Not always.

Steve showed up to the meetings, at any rate.

Not today. Today, he wanted to go home. An itch under his skin he needed to scratch. A big fuck you to the suits and the circumstances.

“You owe me.”

“For so very many things.”

She flipped him the bird on her way out the door, pretending to be pissed with perfect poise. He’d missed her, his bright spot in the darkness that had been his first few years back. Glad of her friendship and her company. Not as much as Sam was, these days, and didn’t that just make him smile?

Gathering his things, he swung his backpack over his shoulders and hit the road, hair still damp from the shower. It would dry into a hell of a coif on the way home, thanks to the bike and the fact that he never wore a helmet.

He made good time to the bridge, weaving in and out of traffic in a way that wasn’t strictly legal but was safe enough, considering his reflexes. Once he was across, it didn’t take him long to reach their neighborhood. He liked the house - the type of brownstone he would have envied as a kid, passing by with wide eyes, hands in his pockets, jealous of the families who lived there. He could have been nobler about it, but shit, it was hard to have principles when you were so goddamn hungry. Now, he _was_ one of those families. Him and Bucky. Living alongside this bourgeoisie nonsense. Growing up there sure as shit hadn’t been artisanal juice and hot yoga on every corner.

Still, there were some high points. Nan’s, for example. Just down the block.

Nan’s was the kind of bakery he’d grown up coveting, the smell of freshly baked bread hitting his raw, empty stomach like a punch in the gut every time he walked past an open door. Bakeries like Nan’s had spun siren songs of sweet indulgence and forbidden pleasures he could scarcely dream of.

Bucky had gotten a paper route when he was nine, hoarding what little money he received until they had enough for one black and white between them. Being older and wiser, Bucky sent Steve in with the change fisted in one small, sweaty hand, figuring they’d feel sorrier for Steve. Maybe be kinder to him on account of being small, so long as he could refrain from being ornery for half a minute.

“Pout at ‘em a little,” Bucky had said.

“Won’t.”

“I _dare_ you.”

Steve would do just about anything if you dared him, so he’d approached with his chin out, lower lip jutting. Offering the change to the portly, matronly German woman behind the counter. Maybe she was someone’s grandma, with those thick spectacles. Steve didn’t know the German kids, but he knew they had good cookies.

The spectacle lady had handed him two cookies instead of the one he could afford. One for each of them, even though Bucky tried to give Steve half of his own, like Bucky didn’t need the cookie just as much as Steve did. Bucky was always doing stuff like that.

Eventually, what pocket money they could scrape together started building towards seamier pursuits - cigarettes for Bucky, comics for Steve, Tijuana bibles for the both of them. The cookies felt childish in comparison. Now, though, cookies were an easy indulgence.

Steve had seen the black and whites in the window of Nan’s the day he brought Bucky home. He’d gone out and bought a half dozen that night. They had eaten them in bed, legs tangled together. Happy. Things had felt normal then. Like it was all going to work.

At first - after Bucharest, after Siberia, after Wakanda, after Shuri’s miracles and time spent on his own - Bucky had seemed fine. They’d settled into something resembling a routine, cohabiting the space as Bucky adjusted to his new surroundings.

Perhaps naively, Steve had assumed Bucky would continue to improve. That the pieces of him would continue to slot into place until he was whole. It hadn’t worked out that way. Bucky had begun to slip, despite the twice-weekly therapy. Despite Steve’s attempts to keep him close.

Steve had started waking up in the middle of the night, petrified Bucky would be gone. Slipped out a window as though he’d only ever been a chimera meant to drive Steve mad.

Then, just as quickly as he’d started slipping, he began coming back. The past month he’d been affectionate and funny - not the Bucky of Steve’s childhood, but something new. Someone new. Steve liked him fine. More than fine. Loved him a lot, as it happened.

So he wanted to surprise Bucky with something sweet. Bought them each two black and whites, then tipped the girl behind the counter a ten dollar bill because he wasn’t the cheapskate everyone always accused him of being.

He walked the bike down the street and locked it just inside the gate. Natasha had given him endless shit about the inevitability of the bike being stolen. Steve had argued that if someone needed it that badly, they were welcome to it. He could easily afford another one these days. She’d punched him in the arm and called him an idiot in the way that reassured him he was loved.

Bucky usually heard him coming, so he didn’t bother calling out as he opened up the front door, setting the bag from the bakery down on the hall table so he could shrug out of his leather jacket. Instinct told him to drape it across the nearest chair; habit told him Bucky would give him shit if he did that. Bucky loved giving him shit.

Humming tunelessly, he tossed the jacket over his arm and opened the coat closet door.

Something was wrong.

An instinctive reaction, body before brain. Grabbed the nearest available weapon, which happened to be a god-awful ugly vase he’d been drawn to at a flea market.

There was _something in the closet._

_Christ, where was Bucky?_

The intruder leaped at him, and Steve brought the vase down on its skull, hideous pottery splintering into shards. Didn’t even slow the fucker down - it pinned Steve to the wall with a snarl. Steve’s pulse quickened, and his brain fought to make sense of the situation because Jesus - _Jesus_ \- it had a mask a goddamn mask it had a _mask_ and it was deja vu and helicarriers and Bucky, Bucky, where was _Bucky_?

Blue eyes, red-rimmed, stared out from the vast emptiness of that soulless face and the intruder squeezed his neck, both of them breathing heavily. Steve’s hand spasmed against the broken shard of ceramic he still held, and he figured maybe he could get it into the fucker’s carotid except the fucker looked _scared._ Petrified.

Synapses fired and Steve’s brain caught up. An eternity passing in a moment. The hand was metal. The hand was _metal_ and the eyes were blue.

“...Bucky?”

Bucky froze. Blinked. God, was he crying? The metal hand gripping Steve’s throat loosened. Steve placed a hand on Bucky’s chest in return, feeling his heart pounding the way a wild animal’s beat when you held it. Erratic and afraid.

This was a lot.

Steve knew it was a lot. Knew he wasn’t processing it quite right, but if he could narrow his focus to Bucky, he might just manage.

“It’s alright, Buck,” he said, voice hitching as he rubbed his hand over the heavy material in which Bucky was swaddled. Familiar material. Steve’s winter coat. Why in the hell was Bucky in his goddamn winter coat?

And that _fucking_ mask. Where had he even gotten it?

Didn’t matter. Didn’t solve the problem. The problem being Bucky. Steve’s personal stumbling block.

Pushing away from the wall, Steve attempted to wrap Bucky up in a hug. Of course, Bucky wasn’t having it. His eyes went wide and he stepped back, releasing his hold on Steve and fleeing, bare feet beating a path through the house until Steve heard a door slam. Undoubtedly the door to that odd little room where Bucky hoarded the shit he thought Steve didn’t know about. Steve wasn’t an idiot; he knew Bucky went out sometimes. Found things and brought them back, hid them away from prying eyes. It seemed harmless enough. Who was he to argue with Bucky’s habits?

Maybe he ought to have asked. Maybe. If Bucky’d been fleecing HYDRA safehouses and equipment lockers, stealing little pieces of his soul to try and fit it back together.

“Stop being so poetic,” he muttered, bringing a hand up to massage his throat, which would be fine in a minute - Bucky hadn’t been trying to hurt him. He hung up his coat, leaned his face against the door jamb of the closet and counted to five. Five was all he got.

Straightening, he picked up the bag from the bakery and went to sit in the hallway outside Bucky’s room for as long as it took.

There was plenty of time to think as he sat, waiting, the silence within the room as worrying as anything without. He’d been naive, he supposed, if this was how Bucky was coping. Whatever _this_ was. Fuck. It was supposed to have been simple. Him and Bucky. A house in Brooklyn. The opportunity to have as old men the life they’d wished for as young ones.

But Bucky wasn’t fine. The good days a lie facilitated by something to do with the mask and bad memories and Steve’s coat and what the fuck had he been _doing_?

Steve looked down. Ten perfect half-moons dug into the skin of his palms. Christ, wasn’t this why Bucky had the doctor? The fancy therapist paid for begrudgingly by Tony as part of Bucky’s reintegration.

Bucky was supposed to be getting _better_. Not hiding in closets crying because...why, exactly? Because he thought he couldn’t trust Steve? Thought it was better to be taciturn and difficult or clingy and silent, but never himself. Never letting his guard down or telling Steve what went on in his head.

God, this was hard. It was hard, and Steve hated it. Loved Bucky. Had a hard time reconciling the two.

It took nearly thirty minutes before a shadow passed through the scant light spilling from underneath the door into the hall. Steve could hear the slide of Bucky’s body down the wall behind him. Back to back with his buddy, save for the plaster and lathe.

“Buck-y,” he sing-songed, “Miss you, pal.”

Taking a chance, Steve reached out. Wormed his pinky underneath the gap between the scratched wooden door and the refinished hardwood. Held his breath and waited until Bucky’s little finger hooked into place like a promise.

“Bucky, Bucky,” he crooned, voice cracked and off-key. Steve couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket; Bucky said he liked hearing him try. “After you, who could I love? After you, why should I take the time to try?”

He made it through another couple stanzas before Bucky’s pinky retreated and the door opened. Bucky crawled into his lap, nuzzling up to him in a pair of sweats and one of Steve’s t-shirts. No coat. No mask. He pushed himself as close to Steve as he could get, which reminded Steve uncomfortably of a kicked dog. Not a dog you meant to kick; maybe one you stepped on accidentally, the animal letting out a scream of pain and betrayal before coming back. Begging you for comfort even though you were the one who’d caused the hurt.

Steve held him close, breathed him in, pressed a thousand kisses to his face. If Bucky wanted to be sweet, Steve would let him be sweet. Steve’s kicked mutt; his kid with a scraped knee. Seeking comfort where he could get it.

That would have been easier. The sting of iodine, a bandage. A kiss on the sore spot. It was tough when Bucky was all sore spot and didn’t take well to any bandaging.  

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured, pressing kisses along Bucky’s hairline. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Bucky shifted minutely, knocking his head against Steve’s chin before pulling back, eyes still red and puffy. “S’alright,” he said. “You skipped the Tony meeting?”

“Guilty.” He reached up, tucking a piece of Bucky’s hair behind his ear. While he was in the neighborhood, he took the opportunity to lean in and press a kiss to his earlobe. “I called the whole thing off.”

“Potato, po-tah-to.”

Steve laughed, leaning his forehead against Bucky’s, close enough that he could count every pore. “Yeah. Wanna order oysters and cancel the ersters?”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Shuddup. You shoulda texted me.”

“I will next time.” He hesitated. “Buck, where’d you get the ma…”

Bucky cut him off with a kiss. Unfair advantage. Steve kissed back anyway.

“Found it,” he muttered. “Doesn’t matter.”

It mattered. Of course it mattered. They had to talk about it - about what precisely he’d been doing in there. He could feel Bucky tensing. Waiting for the inevitable question. Steve didn’t want to frighten him off again.

Not when he was being so good. So easy.

Maybe it wasn’t fair to want easy, but shit, Steve was sick of hard.

“Yeah, alright,” he muttered.

Bucky smiled, tension ebbing from him as he went soft  - little lamb lost in the woods, waiting for Steve to find him and bring him home. Nothing to see here, no weird crap in a closet. Just Steve’s easy guy.

“Hey, Steve?”

“Yeah, Buck?”

“Can we go watch something dumb?”

“Yeah, Buck.”

They ended up in front of the television, a nature documentary on the screen, all big cats and elephants. Steve hand-fed Bucky both of his black and whites, Bucky’s head pillowed on his lap, dark hair fanning out across his stomach and thighs. Fuck, Steve loved him.

Bucky would talk when he was ready.


	3. All My Wires Without Traces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Potentially triggering content in this chapter; see end notes if you're worried.

_SteveknowsSteveknowsSteveknowsSteveknowsSteveKNOWSSteveknows_ …

Two words, running on a loop. Two words, a low hum in his brain like an amplifier with a loose wire. Speaker buzzing. _Steveknowsssss._ Maybe there was a faulty connection? A circuit board in need of soldering. Stark could do it - open his head up, find the noise, cut it out and plug him in. Sub-optimal fix but optimal enough. Shuri could do it better but letting her know he was failing wasn’t an option. _SteveKNOWS_.

Fuck.

“Bucky?” Doc’s voice cut through the hum.

He looked up, found her waiting.

Doc was bothering him today. Didn’t usually bother him. The time they spent together was neither good nor bad because Doc knew who he was while Steve worried about who he could be.

It was easier with Doc. She sat in her puffy white cloud-chair which was a perfectly identical match to Bucky’s puffy white cloud-chair except Bucky’s chair had more wear on the arm, the fabric splitting where a hundred million patients had rubbed it raw. He liked the chairs. Liked imagining what it might feel like to get sucked up into the squashy, soft insides. Living there with the plywood and the stuffing.

Doc’s hair was brown like his own but shorter. Cut into a blunt bob the way girls other-Bucky remembered had worn it when he’d first noticed how girls did anything. The cut suited Doc’s angular face. Set off her smile which was kind but never condescending. Bucky liked her smile. Liked how her legs were long, how she’d cross and uncross them as they spoke - pencil thin limbs tapering off into heels so high he wondered how she didn’t snap an ankle. Spent a lot of time thinking about how she’d learned to walk in them without teetering, balancing precariously on the knife-edge.

“Are you with me?”

Yes and no. He shrugged, considering, then reached for one of the foil-wrapped chocolates she kept on the table between the cloud-chairs. Her office pretended to be comfortable like a den even though it wasn’t. Doc was a real P. Sychiatrist, which was how Steve pronounced it cause he thought it was funny. Steve wasn’t funny.

(“You don’t have to go, Buck,” he had said when they were still in Wakanda. Reviewing the fuck-you papers that said Bucky was undergoing care. Was under Steve’s supervision. Wasn’t willing, just a weapon. Don’t blame the gun, maintain the gun. “I can negotiate for something better.”

“I want to go.”

Steve had raised an eyebrow because Steve didn’t think talking about problems made them go away. Didn’t see the point. Like Steve wasn’t the shit king of a molehill mountain of his own making.

The way Bucky saw it, one of them needed to be seeing a headshrinker, and he was the most likely candidate. Ergo: Doc.)

Doc’s real name was Angela Mary Brewington which Bucky knew because he had read the diplomas on her wall. Duke followed by Harvard. He could pick up the North Carolina in her voice sometimes. The way she tried to hide it like she had things of her own to talk about in cloud-chairs. Like maybe Doc didn’t like everything about herself, either.

Bucky just called her Doc.

Doc was _supposed_ to be easy.

“M’with you,” he muttered, carefully peeling back the foil around the chocolate and resting the candy on his left knee before systematically rolling the wrapping into a tiny ball against his blue jeans.  

She uncrossed her legs. Crossed them the other way. Left a red mark on her thigh where her bare skin had been stuck together. Bucky touched his leg. “Tell me about things since Monday.”

Easy. Rules of Getting Better. “Got the mail on Tuesday. Yesterday I ran to Prospect Park and back. Took my meds every day.”

Doc stayed quiet. Bucky figured maybe she wanted him to say more which sometimes he did, but not today. “How was the run?” she asked when Bucky ran out the invisible timer. “Tell me more about that.”

Bucky stuck the chocolate in his mouth, the tablet beginning its transformation to sticky, soft ooze. Coating his teeth and his tongue with a grainy film because it wasn’t the best chocolate, but it was what Doc had, and beggars couldn’t be choosers, and also beggars couldn’t answer questions with chocolate in their mouths.

Doc was patient. Bucky had to swallow eventually.

“Wanted to see if I could,” he said, closing his eyes. The run had come from a desire to see if his legs could still carry him that far. If he was operating at peak efficiency or if his joints and gears had begun turning to rust and ruin. The problem was - the _problem_ was - that nobody made the goddamn parts anymore.

“And you could?”

He grunted, rolling the ball of foil against his leg, harder now. It was impossible to make Doc see, sometimes. “Not _me_. The parts of me.”

Doc’s foot twitched, knife-heel bobbing before she spoke again. “Those parts are you, Bucky. You know that.”

He did and he didn’t. Sighing, he shifted in the chair, eyes flicking to the wall. Doc didn’t have a clock, but there _should have been_. He looked every visit. Hated that he lost time in her office. She never went even one minute over ninety but he _knew_ he lost time. “They’re me but they’re not.”

“Can you elaborate on that?”

“No.” He shoved the ball of foil into his pocket and reached for another piece of chocolate.

Doc didn’t push. Doc never pushed. She mimicked Bucky instead, picking up her own piece of chocolate.

“How are things with Steve?”

 _SteveKNOWS_.

“Good, I guess.”

“You guess?”

Bucky stuck the new chocolate into his mouth. “Yeah.”

“Better than last time?”

Bucky bit down and caught his tongue along with the chocolate which was good because he shouldn’t have talked so much about Steve on Monday. He’d talked a _lot_. About how Steve was disappointed with him. How Steve looked at him with sad eyes even when Steve was pretending to be happy. How Bucky knew what Steve wanted, and what he wanted was the other-Bucky.

Doc had asked if Steve was actually disappointed in him - actually wanted the other-Bucky - or if Bucky was only projecting that disappointment onto Steve.

Bucky didn’t see how there was a difference.

Doc had given him homework: talk to Steve about how he felt.

Talking required maintenance. Doc was a smart lady - she’d understand why he had to do it. Why it helped. Didn’t need to tell her about it. So he’d put himself away on Tuesday with the intention of talking to Steve that night. _Really_ talking to him.

But then Steve found out and Bucky discovered just how deep Steve’s disappointment ran. He had seen the horror-terror-fear in Steve’s eyes and how Steve saw Bucky as a real-goddamn- _problem_.

“Same,” he grunted, poking his chocolate-coated tongue against the back of his teeth to feel what that felt like. Pretty good.

“Mmm.” Doc made noises like Steve sometimes. Bucky fought the urge to dig his fingers into the cloud chair and rip up the fabric. “Did you talk to him like we talked about?”

“No.”

Bucky waited for her to yell. He’d been so good, and he’d gone out every day, and he’d taken his meds, but he hadn’t done that _one_ thing and now she was going to tell him to fuck off, she couldn’t help him, he was a disgrace.

Doc didn’t yell. Didn’t say anything. Just sat there and looked at him until he began oozing from the inside out like so much melted chocolate.

“He’s fine,” Bucky blurted. “Steve’s fine. When I’m better - when you make me better - he won’t be so disappointed.”

Doc leaned forward. “We’re a team, Bucky. You’re doing the hard work here.”

Bucky wanted to crawl on the ground until her heel punctured his eyeball because of how wrong she was. Didn’t.

“I am...a little concerned, though,” Doc continued. “Is Steve pressuring you to talk about what we do here?”

Rule number seven hundred and forty-seven: talking _about_ therapy was different than talking _because of_ therapy.

“No!” Doc didn’t understand. She usually did. It was a bad day. “But I know how he is. I know how to...I know what he’s thinking and he’s disappointed I’m not this...guy he remembers. So when I can _be_ that guy, he’ll like me again. And be happy.”

“Will _you_ be happy? You, not the other Bucky.”

Bucky shrugged. His finger hurt. “If Steve’s happy.”

Doc’s eyes flicked down, back up. “You remember what we talked about last Thursday? Getting so fixated on the future that you lose track of the now?”

Nope. Stomach in a vice, squeezing. Chocolate turned to chalk in his throat. He might be sick. The world was narrowing to a pinprick and his finger _hurt_.  

“We’re working on you, for you. Not for Steve. I want to know how things with Steve are for _you_. You understand?”

The plates in his-not-his arm shifted. He cleared his throat three times. “No,” he said. “I’m fine. Steve’s good. We’re good.”

“Bucky, that’s not…”

Doc reached out. Touched his hand. Pulled his thumb away from the rest of his fingers. Bucky looked down and saw blood. His blood - oil and engine grease. Thumb scratching a groove into the cuticle of his middle finger.

“Bucky.” Doc’s voice again. “Please don’t do that.”

Bucky jerked his hand back and stuck his finger in his mouth. Sucked the blood out of the wound. Different texture than chocolate but complementary. The taste of both clinging to his tongue.

Doc got to her feet, gliding on her heels like Natasha did, sometimes. Dug through her purse and presented a little bandage to him with an apologetic smile. Band-Aid. There was a cartoon dog on it. Looked like something Steve might have drawn.

“For my daughter, just in case,” Doc said, sitting back down. Crossing her legs, so everything was right with the world. “Sorry, it’s all I have.”

Bucky sank into the cloud, curling and uncurling his-not-his fist on his knee before carefully putting the band-aid on. “I don’t want to talk about Steve anymore.”

Declaring wants and needs was important. Bucky had to be _autonomous_.

Doc’s mouth turned down for a fraction of a second that anyone but Bucky might have missed. Smiled at him. Turned the subject to whether or not it might help him to keep a journal.

The session ended at five-thirty on the dot and Bucky walked directly home, arriving at five thirty-seven because it took six and a half minutes to walk, thirty seconds to unlock the front door.

Steve was in the den, a mess of papers spread out on the coffee table. He looked up when Bucky came in, the kind of smile on his face that said Bucky could ruin his day.

Bucky didn’t want to ruin his day, but he might. It had happened before. He went to sit on Steve’s right side, but Steve saw the cartoon dog anyway.

“What’s this?” He reached for Bucky’s hand. Bucky let him take it as though it was his to give away.

“Papercut,” he lied.

“At therapy?” Steve wasn’t stupid. Lifted Bucky’s hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to the dog.

“Yeah, we were doing...stuff. There was paper. I don’t…” he shrugged. “Not supposed to talk about it.”

“You’re not supposed to talk about therapy?”

Bucky sighed, closing his eyes. “You’re not supposed to ask me. It’s confidential.”

Steve’s face clouded over the way it always did when he thought Doc was pointless nonsense. “You come back here with a bandage on your hand, I get to…”

“It’s dumb,” he said. Mollifying the cat dropped in the tub. “Accident. It’ll heal in an hour. Can we, I...” Schooling his face into an approximation of a smile, he shrugged. “Sorry. It was a...long afternoon. And I missed you. Let’s not fight.”

Steve softened. Steve always softened. Pressed another kiss to Bucky’s hand and smiled back with a real smile. “I missed you, too. I don’t want to fight, either.”

“Good.”

“Good,” Steve shrugged. Said, “you hung-” at the same time Bucky said, “let’s go fuck. I wanna.”

It wasn’t a lie - he did. Liked fucking. Liked when Steve touched him because Steve’s touches made him feel real. Plus, Steve made good faces when Bucky offered - shock blooming into pink-tinged pleasure.

It was easier to lead Steve around by the dick than it was to let Steve lead Bucky around by the hand, most days.

“Yeah, alright,” Steve agreed, looking like he was happy but didn’t want to be _too_ happy. The look that made Bucky want to yank out every hair on his head individually.

He made his mouth into another smile instead. “Don’t gotta sound so enthusiastic.”

“I’m enthusiastic, pal.” Steve leaned in, kissed Bucky’s neck just below his ear. “Go get cleaned up, meet me in the bedroom?”

A weight lifted in Bucky’s chest. Cleaning up was like maintenance. Getting himself reset and ready. No more grime or dirt. Rinsing off the last of the chocolate and conversation.

He went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. It would have been easy to linger under the spray but he never did, no matter how good the water felt. He did what he needed to do to prepare and thought maybe other-Bucky never had it so easy, but he hadn’t cared so much, either. Hadn’t known it could be better.

The towel smelled fresh - Steve must have done laundry. Replaced it. Bucky was just about to pick it up when he caught a glimpse of himself in the half-fogged mirror.

Something was wrong.

The mirror-Bucky wasn’t him. He stepped closer to the glass. Lifted his hand to wipe away the steam, put it back down. Made a face. The mirror-Bucky made it back a millisecond slower and he _knew_ it. Knew it wasn’t him in there.

A whine in his throat as he turned away from the not-reflection and palmed his cock. A perfunctory gesture - soothing himself like a kid with a pacifier. Perked up, though, and wasn’t that something? Gave Steve a head start, which was good because Steve got funny when Bucky couldn’t get things going. Didn’t like the outward evidence of Bucky’s malfunctioning parts.

He stroked himself to half-hardness, trying not to think about the not-reflection. Went to the bedroom with the towel around his waist to find Steve, naked, golden, reclining on the bed with a book in his hand.

Steve grinned when he saw him; put the book down and gave Bucky a hungry sort of look. Held out his hand, so Bucky took it, dropping the towel as Steve tugged him to the edge of the bed and wasted no time getting his mouth on Bucky’s cock, swallowing him down as Bucky hummed low in his throat. He threaded his fingers through Steve’s hair and focused on how the cartoon dog looked in the forest of follicles. Mouthed the word ‘follicles’ six times to himself before Steve pulled back, looking up at him and nuzzling against his hip.

“Alright, Buck?” Bucky was still halfway there but wasn’t getting any harder.

He shrugged. Bent to kiss the top of Steve’s head. “Don’t worry about it. If uh...if I could see you during, though?”

Steve understood. Lay him out on the bed and kissed him sweet and dirty. Slicked him up like usual - one, two, three fingers, practiced and efficient. Lined himself up and pushed in, folding Bucky in half, knees practically on his shoulders. Steve groaned with pleasure like he hadn’t done it a million times before. Not quite a million. Close enough.

It wasn’t helping - the sounds of fucking, the weight of Steve’s body. Being useful. Bucky couldn’t stop thinking about the not-reflection, thoughts traveling back to the bathroom, so he turned his head to _look_ and saw his right kneecap.

Steve buried his face against Bucky’s neck and kissed his skin, but Bucky couldn’t think about that with the problem right there.

There was a mole on the inside of his knee. It hadn’t been there before, he was sure. A feature or a bug? Something he was meant to have or something someone had put on him?

Bucky’s breath hitched in his throat; pins and needles in his toes, traveling up his calf. He lifted his hand and settled it on his knee, digging his thumbnail into the new mole. Anticipating the sound. The sound of something mechanical breaking - the bug placed under his skin by the not-reflection splintering apart.

He knew it was true when he couldn’t feel the pain of his nail digging in. Ground it in further, waiting for the pop and fizzle. The proof he’d been compromised.

“Bucky?”

Startled from his reverie, Bucky turned his head and found Steve looking down at him with confusion on his face. Hips stilled - buried to the hilt but not moving. Not happy.

“Sorry,” Bucky said, lifting his hand from his knee - rough indentation left in its wake - and placing it on Steve’s cheek. “Sorry, I’m alright.”

“Buck, you’re not…” Steve gestured with one hand as he used the other to prop himself up.

Bucky glanced between them. He’d gone flaccid, prick lying useless against his stomach. Brain had bigger fish to fry, what with the nanobots planted by not-reflections.

“I know, but it’s fine,” he muttered. “I’m fine. Just…”

“You’re not,” Steve said, his Captain Fuck-off America voice taking over his nice voice as he shifted his hips minutely. Began to pull away.

“No, no,” Bucky managed. He could feel it - Steve slipping out of him - the rest of his body numb. Full of invaders but only one he wanted. “Don’t, Steve, please. I like it. I need it…”

“Bucky…”

“I _like_ it,” he insisted, reaching for Steve’s hand. Bringing it to his mouth and pressing a wet kiss to Steve’s palm. “Please, Steve?”

Steve hesitated. Bucky licked his hand. Steve shuddered, slid back in.

Better, better, better. Bucky could feel him _everywhere_ , crawling up his insides and starting the pistons pumping again. He wished Steve could stay inside of him all the time. That Bucky could always be useful for him. Never have to worry about anything else.

Steve’s hand was still covering his mouth. Steve’s real, big, warm hand, with Steve’s heartbeat pulsing just below the skin. Bucky could feel it and his own heart jumped in his chest. Thump _thump_ just like Steve.

It was something but it wasn’t enough. He needed to hear it better. Steve’s eyes were closed, so Bucky shifted underneath him, angling his face in such a way that Steve’s hand wasn’t just over his mouth but his nostrils, too, covered up by the side of his palm. It was good, it was _good_ and Steve - caught in the throes of his almost-orgasm - hadn’t noticed.

Bucky kissed Steve’s skin. Put his hand on top of Steve’s hand and pressed down so he couldn’t breathe and he didn’t _need_ to breathe because things made sense when he didn’t. Heart jackhammering, blood pounding. Fuck, this was better than the mask. Better than the closet.

Steve came with a gasp, pulsing inside of him as Bucky saw stars. Only then did Steve realize what Bucky had done. Blue eyes opening and looking down.

“Jesus, Bucky,” he muttered, yanking his hand away like Bucky had lit a match in his palm. Wounded and _disappointed_.

Bucky whined and scrabbled after him, grabbing at his hand. It was bad. This was bad.

Steve’s softening prick slipped from his body and Bucky shuddered and twisted, gasping out a, “please…?”

“Please _what_?” Steve sat back on his heels and pushed both hands through his hair. Oh, he was so upset and Bucky didn’t want him to be.

“Please don’t be...it’s alright. I’m alright.”

“Bucky, I could have _hurt_ you.”

Steve sounded helpless; Bucky had made him helpless. He couldn’t breathe - throat closing up around any air he forced past his lips. Wasn’t good this time, just scary.

“Why’d you let me do that, Buck, huh?” Steve’s voice broke and nonono, it was all wrong. Bucky pushed himself up and over, burying his face in Steve’s lap. Forcing air into his lungs, Steve’s familiar smell all-encompassing - musk and spunk and sweat.

“Sorry, sorry,” he muttered. “Sorry, Steve.”

“No, come on,” Steve said, a firm hand landing on Bucky’s shoulder. Nudging him upright. No arguments. “We gotta talk about this, Bucky. What the hell?”

Didn’t want to talk. Steve knew too much and one more thing might do it. But Steve had stubbornface on so Bucky knew he had to come up with something.

“Just...wanted to feel my heartbeat,” he said. Wasn’t much of an explanation but at least it was almost true.

Steve’s face twisted up in confusion. “You what?”

Shit, shit, double shit. Explaining was impossible. “I could feel your pulse,” he said, twisting his hands together into a knot, trying hard not to pick. Not to bleed. “When I kissed your palm? And I wanted to...to match.”

Steve’s hands flexed on his thighs and Bucky wanted to kiss them. “You could have asked,” Steve said, betrayal coloring his tone.

Dumb. No. Steve would have said no. Don’t wanna hurt you, Buck. Don’t wanna scare you, Buck. Couldn’t _ask_.

“...not fair to do that without telling me. Coulda hurt you…” Still talking. Bucky frowned.

“You weren’t hurting me,” he interrupted. “I liked it.”

Steve faltered. Bucky took the opportunity to pick up his hand - the hand he’d made Steve use - kissing the back of it. Trying his very best to be reassuring and normal because Steve needed normal.

“You liked it,” Steve said like he didn’t believe it. “It’s...Bucky, is this about the shit with the mask?”

(Fuck, nononono not now, Steve, it’s _fixed_ we were _fixing_ it.)

He bit Steve’s knuckle, harder than he meant to, sucked on the red mark left behind. Steve didn’t move. Didn’t ask another question. Bucky shook his head minutely. “Different.”

“How’s it different?”

“Dunno.” Bucky bent at the waist again, forehead pressed to Steve’s knee. Steve didn’t stop him that time. Didn’t make him sit up and face his choices. “Sometimes it’s better when it’s dark and quiet and I don’t have to…” Be. Exist. “...think.”

Steve sighed and then his fingers were in Bucky’s hair, combing through the tangles. Bucky pressed a half-dozen kisses to Steve’s knee.

“You can tell me this stuff, Buck,” Steve said as time slipped through Bucky’s fingers. How long had they been like that? “I could help.”

His Steve - generous to a fault. To Bucky’s faults.

“Your coat helps,” he blurted. “When I was wearing it. Felt like you were with me.”

Fingers brushed the curve of his ear, down the shell to the lobe, Steve pinching the skin there, rubbing it with a curious sort of intimacy that made Bucky’s heart seize in his chest.

“I don’t…” Steve began before blowing out a breath like Bucky broke him, too. “I don’t get it, Buck. You flinch when I touch you sometimes, but then, my coat…?”

The answer was obvious. Bucky pulled back, sat up and looked at Steve. “That’s when I’m not me.”

“The flinching?”

“Yeah.”

Steve’s eyes held more questions Bucky didn’t want to answer. He was tired. They were tired. Steve looked at him, real close like a microscope, before holding out his arms. Tugged Bucky down to the mattress and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“Pal…” he began before not saying whatever he’d been about to say. Bucky could tell. What came out instead was, “please just talk to me, alright?”

“Uh huh.”

They fell asleep like that, unresolved and unhappy. Ravenous hunger on both their parts woke them around midnight, so Steve made peanut butter sandwiches which they ate in bed, which was good. Normal.

It had been a glitch.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: Bucky initiates sex with Steve to distract him from another conversation. While in bed, Bucky has an episode of depersonalization. When Steve notices something's wrong, Bucky asks to continue. Bucky takes advantage of Steve's eyes being closed to shift positions so Steve's hand blocks his airflow. The moment lasts as long as it takes Steve to come, and he's unhappy when he realizes what Bucky tricked him into doing. They have a conversation without much resolution.


	4. A correspondence with a mightier power

Steve hadn’t slept. He’d pretended to sleep, let Bucky think he was sleeping, but he hadn’t slept. Any time he had gotten close, he’d jerk awake, terrified Bucky might not be breathing.

Bucky’s breathing hadn’t been a real point of concern before, but now. Well. Every day was a new goddamn adventure.

Around seven, he left Bucky alone and padded out to the living room in bare feet and the pajama pants he’d draped over an armchair the night before.

Before everything went to shit. Before Bucky tried to, what, precisely? Kill himself with Steve’s cock in his ass?

Fuck if that wasn’t a productive line of thought. Coffee first. He made himself a pot and sat down with a mug, reaching for the tablet they kept on the living room table, ostensibly for news, though Steve still subscribed to the papers. (The tablet remained because there was a part of him that wanted to get his news like everybody else just to prove he _could_.)

Steve lasted ten seconds on the _Times_ front page before tapping on the search bar and typing in _‘hand on mouth sex._ ’

The top three results were all a variation on ‘ _Why does my boyfriend put his fingers in my mouth during sex?’_

“It’s phallic, dumbass,” Steve muttered, amending the search to ‘ _hand on mouth and nose sex_.’

An article on STDs courtesy of Fox News, and a couple weird blog posts about hand, foot, and mouth disease. Sometimes modern technology was a gift, but often it was frustratingly obtuse.

_‘Stop breathing during sex.’_

That one was more enlightening - articles and first-person accounts of folks feeling short of breath during an orgasm, along with some science-y explanations of why people held their breath when coming. One article mentioned a lack of oxygen heightening pleasure. Steve could understand that; hell, he did it himself. But it wasn’t the same thing as what Bucky had done.

“Fourth time’s the charm,” he said, before trying ‘ _cutting off airflow sex_ ’ and immediately recoiling at the results. There was a page on asphyxiation, along with a series of articles about murderous fucks who’d choked and killed people - women, mostly - during acts of assault and rape.

The Internet was proving singularly unhelpful, and Steve was done. Good thing, too, as Bucky appeared in the doorway of the living room just as he finished clearing the history - a nifty trick Natasha had shown him.

“Morning,” Bucky said, voice thick with sleep, pushing his messy hair out of his eyes. Naked save for a fresh pair of boxers.

“Hi,” Steve replied, putting the tablet down and extending a hand, wanting Bucky close. They’d talked enough last night.

Bucky smiled, letting Steve pull him down to the couch. Long-limbed and sleep warm, Bucky curled at his side, pressing a few kisses to Steve’s bare bicep.

“You going out with Sam later?”

Steve and Sam had a standing lunch most Fridays unless there was business, and business had been slow of late. Supervillains and monsters on a sabbatical, which probably meant lousy news down the road, but that was a problem for another day. Another Steve.

“I was planning on it,” he said. Reaching up, he ran a finger down Bucky’s jaw, tracing the solid familiarity of it and smiling when Bucky leaned into the touch. “But I can stay here if that’s better. Or, you could come with?”

Leaving Bucky alone hadn’t scared him before. Bucky had been taking care of himself for the better part of two years when Steve found him. Although ‘found’ wasn’t even the right word - fate forcing his hand, more like. Now, though, he had visions in his head of Bucky in the mask. In the closet. Doing whatever the fuck he did when Steve was gone.

Made a fella not want to leave the house. Made him want to hold Bucky close and squeeze him so tight that everything but the happy parts fell away. The saved parts.

He didn’t want to think about how small those parts might be.

“Nah,” Bucky replied, pressing one more noisy kiss to his arm. “Sam doesn’t like me. Anyway, I’m going shopping.”

Sam and Bucky’s cheerful antagonism of one another brought them each some weird, idiot joy, and Steve never questioned it. It wasn’t true, but what did that matter? He focused on Bucky’s other statement instead.

“What are you shopping for?”

“Journal.” Bucky pushed himself to his feet, stretching his arms over his head. The long, lean line of his body was tempting; Steve’s fingers ached to touch, but he stayed his hand, not wanting to start something one of them might not be able to finish. “Doc says I gotta start writing shit down again.”

Steve frowned, glad Bucky was looking elsewhere. Of course he’d do what Doc said - he’d do anything she told him to. That woman knew all Bucky’s secrets, and Steve didn’t know shit. What gave her the right to know more, save for a fancy degree and a plush office in Park Slope?

“Sounds good, pal,” he said. Regardless of his feelings on Doc and her effectiveness (Jesus Christ, was the mask supposed to be _helping_?), Bucky wouldn’t hear a word against her. “Want some breakfast?”

After all, Bucky was supposed to take his pills with food.

“Yeah. I’m gonna plan my route.”

Steve didn’t know how to explain that he didn’t have to.

 

* * *

 

“Can I ask you a question?”

Sam looked up from his Reuben, giving the sandwich a resigned nod before placing it back on his plate. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“On if this is gonna be one of those questions where I end up telling you I’m not a therapist, and I’m _especially_ not your therapist.”

Steve scowled and took a bite of his pickle. It was a decent pickle, as pickles went, and he and Sam would know. They were on a mission to visit every traditional-style delicatessen in the five boroughs - no tourist traps - and indulge in the classics. Reubens for Sam, pastrami on rye for Steve.

Once they’d finished with the delis, they were moving on to fried chicken. Then mofongo. Then the sky was the limit. Natasha said their actual plan was to eat until they burst, which meant the whole thing had been one of their better ideas.

“No. Not exactly.”

Sam gave him the look of the long-suffering but gestured for him to continue.

“So. On Tuesday, I came home. And Bucky was curled up in the closet. Uh, crying?”

Sam blinked and picked his sandwich back up, taking a significant bite and setting it back down. It was a nonjudgmental sort of bite, though, so Steve went on.

“And he was wearing...okay, you remember the mask?”

Sam swallowed. “...I am aware of the mask, yes. Pretty sure we left it on the street in DC.”

“Yeah, there was...more than one. He won’t tell me…”

Sam leaned forward, steepling his fingers. “Hold on - wanna make sure we’re clear. You found Bucky curled up in y’all’s closet. Wearing the mask.”

“It was the coat closet.”

Sam laughed, sitting back and crossing his arms. “Because that makes all the difference.”

He had a point. Steve gave a weak chuckle, peeling a slice of pastrami off his sandwich, just for something to do. “Yeah, so.”

“So…?” Sam prompted.

“Oh, well. He didn’t want to talk about it. So.”

Sam brought one hand to the bridge of his nose, squeezing the skin there. “You don’t think that’s the kind of thing you maybe want to push through, Steve? Get some details?”

“He was upset!”

“Oh, yeah, no shit,” Sam agreed. “Steve Rogers, dancing around Bucky’s delicate sensibilities for a century.”

“That’s not…” Steve didn’t want to fight. Ate his pastrami instead. “At first I thought, you know. He’s having a breakdown. But uh...I don’t think so?”

“Yeah? How’s that diagnosing working out for you, Dr. Jung?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “ _Anyway_ , I think it’s maybe...a sex thing.”

“My mistake, Dr. Ruth. We are not having this conversation.”

Holding up his hands, Steve offered an apologetic smile. “Sorry. Sorry, I know.” It was crossing a line - Sam didn’t want to hear about his and Bucky’s sex life any more than Steve wanted to hear about Sam and Natasha’s. But shit, who else was he going to talk to?

Sam took another bite. Chewed and swallowed. The look on his face usually meant he was thinking about how best to put something. How to say what he needed to say without hurting Steve’s feelings. Steve tolerated the coddling because he loved Sam; because Sam loved him back without reservation. Sam was family.

“All I’m going to say,” he said finally. “Is that everyone has different ways of processing their shit. And if he’s working through it, and nobody’s getting hurt…”

Steve cut him off. “He tried to make me suffocate him, in bed, last night…”

“... _Steve_.”

“Sorry!”

“Number one, do _not_.” Sam held up one finger, shaking his head.

“Sorry,” he reiterated. And he was sorry, but not sorry enough that he wished he hadn’t said it. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

“As I was saying,” Sam said. “Nobody’s getting _hurt_. If...it is a sex thing. And I really don’t want to know the details. But _if_. It’s not...unheard of. It’s a thing.”

“A thing.”

“Look it up.”

“I tried.”

“Try harder. Jesus, Steve. All I was trying to say is that everybody’s got their shit, you know? We’re all processing our traumas ‘cause we’ve all got traumas to process. The bad stuff creeps in when you let it fester. You gotta talk about it. Preferably with him, or a professional.”

Steve frowned, reaching for his beer and taking a swig. It had gone lukewarm throughout their talk, which felt about right.

“I don’t like it,” he said with finality. “Seems unhealthy.”

Sam offered him a smile. “You don’t get to make that call. But I think you ought to at least ask the question.”

“Mmm. Maybe.”

Sam didn’t press, and the conversation turned naturally to Natasha, and whether or not she’d appreciate the leftovers. Sam ended up ordering her a sandwich of her own to take with him before they split up.

Bucky was out when Steve got home - he opened the coat closet to check. Nothing but the usual faint, musty smell of knitwear and mothballs, consigned to spending months on a hanger now that spring had sprung, or was considering the distinct possibility of springing.

He sat down on the sofa and pulled the tablet into his lap. “Try harder,” hadn’t been Sam asking nicely, and Steve was determined to try.

This time, he started in the most promising location, navigating to the forum post he’d seen earlier that referenced being choked during sex. Diving down the rabbit hole from there was easy. As it turned out, there were plenty of people who enjoyed being suffocated, or choked, or asphyxiated in any number of interesting ways. These people had blogs, they had websites, they had a myriad of articles about safety and consent, which Steve found himself reading, one by one.

There were other articles, too. Ones about people who’d tried it on their own. Killed themselves. Died in the throes of seeking pleasure and he couldn’t think about it. Refused to imagine it in the context of Bucky and the closet, even as he dug deeper, followed the links and got caught up in the photography and the stories.

Steve wasn’t naive. Neither was he immune to the notion of fetish and fantasy. He knew there were things people did - pretty girls in pinups, bound and gagged; musclebound men kissing leather boots - and he certainly had his own proclivities. One of the benefits of this new, bigger body had been that it allowed him to experience them. He liked holding Bucky close, indulging in Bucky being smaller than Steve now, reality catching up to the way Steve had always imagined himself.

Before the train, before the fall, they’d treated Steve’s new body like an experiment of their own design - two kids in chemistry class with a book of matches and time on their hands. Could he pick Bucky up? Could he pin him down? How long could he hold that headstand, and did it make a difference if Bucky was jerking him off at the same time? Hell, how much weight _could_ he handle?

After the fall, after the grief, after getting Bucky back in the most unexpected fashion, Steve had been sure Bucky didn’t remember those games. And, even if he did, he wouldn’t want to play them. Wouldn’t want to feel helpless, or trapped, or anything other than in total control of himself.

So he’d given Bucky his autonomy, and Bucky had forced his hand.

Fuck.

He clicked another link. Pretty pictures. People - mostly women - bound in intricate twists and ties of rope. A style the page called shibari. It was Japanese in origin, though like most things it had been manipulated by kinky people into infinite variations, some more sadistic than others.

The artist in him appreciated the aesthetics. The Steve and Bucky from before had never tried anything more than a necktie knotted around a bedpost, but something was appealing about the idea of Bucky bound and helpless. Trusting Steve so completely.

Frowning, he clicked to another page and found a blog entry from a woman discussing the experience of being tied. It was a lot of what he’d expected - surrendering control, a lack of choices. But there was something she said, about how the ropes felt like the love of her partner. The support of her spouse. It was mawkish and sentimental, yes, but hadn’t Bucky said something like that to him? That he’d worn Steve’s coat because it made him feel like Steve was touching him. Holding him.

Shaking his head, he pushed the tablet away. It wasn’t as though he knew _how_. Wasn’t as though he could _ask_.

“Captain America Bondage Breathplay SCANDAL” screamed the imaginary headlines. The Post would come up with something funnier - a play on words Steve wasn’t smart enough to think of on his own.

He searched ‘ _shibari bondage sex class new york city_ ’ anyway.

Typical of anything in New York, there were at least six different groups offering rope bondage classes, meeting across the city on a semi-regular basis. He read through them all, finding only one that seemed promising. It provided a no-pressure environment for couples to come and learn basic ties, as well as more advanced classes.

**_Explore your interests in a judgment-free zone! Snacks provided!_ **

The group met every Saturday. Steve briefly considered trying for the following afternoon, but knew in an instant he didn’t have the gumption. Plus, he had to find a partner. No use worrying Bucky with new things when Steve didn’t know if he’d take to it.

After a few more minutes of wibbling back and forth, he texted Natasha.

 

> _Mission parameters: week from tomorrow, 2-4. Disguises needed. Interested?_

 

Her reply came in mere seconds.

 

> _Context?_

 

> _Classified. In or out?_

 

One. Two. Three.

 

> _In_.

 

Natasha was a real pal.

She sent a follow-up text moments later.

 

> _Am I still coming over for dinner on Monday?_

 

> _Yes. Come early_.

 

Which meant she’d arrive while Bucky was still at therapy, so Steve would have plenty of time to fill her in on the mission parameters before they ate. Their Monday nights were a recently established ritual - Sam having taken up volunteering at a youth center and Natasha insisting she couldn’t eat alone. Sam had a death wish, teaching kindergartners how to play sports. Currently, it was t-ball season.

(“It’s altruistic,” Sam had said. “Can’t just save the world from the air.”

“One of them vomited on your shoe,” Natasha had countered.

“You guys are such cynics.”)

 By the time Bucky got home from running his errands, Steve had put the tablet away and was sitting up on the couch with a book in his lap.

“How was the store?” he asked when Bucky appeared in the doorway.

“Fluorescent.”

That made some sort of sense - everything was fluorescent these days. “You get what you needed?”

Bucky nodded, crossing to Steve as he pulled a leatherbound notebook out of the plastic bag, along with a pack of bright green ballpoint pens, presenting them with a funny little smile on his face. “I got this one,” he said. “Because it looks like your sketchbook.”

Steve couldn’t help smiling, tapping the back of Bucky’s hand once, then leaning up to press a kiss to his fingers. “Yeah? Thanks, Buck. You gonna write?”

“Write,” Bucky agreed. He sank to the floor near Steve’s socked feet, hooking his metal arm around Steve’s calf before knocking his head against his knee. He tore open the package of pens, leaving three and removing one. Pulled the cap off with his teeth and spat it onto the ground.

Steve watched him for a moment - the way he opened the notebook slowly, wrote his name and the date on the first page - then gave him his privacy, settling back against the cushions with his novel.

“Steve?” Bucky said after a while.

“Mmm?”

“Did I sometimes used to call you a turnip?”

The memory was so bright, so clear, so sudden, that Steve couldn’t help laughing. “Yeah,” he said. “God, I forgot about that. Your ma was gonna make a stew, and you picked up a turnip and said it looked like me. Fuckin’ dumb jerk joke.”

“Fuckin’ dumb jerk,” Bucky said, looking up with a grin so bright that Steve had to smile back. Waited until Bucky turned back around before tugging the elastic band from his hair, sinking his fingers into the thick waves and palming the curve of Bucky’s skull.

Bucky gave a sigh, leaned his head back against Steve’s knee and began scribbling away once more. Steve resisted the urge to peek at what turnip-related things might have been scrawled on the page.

It wasn't a bad way to spend an afternoon.


	5. Who covets my defects

The notebook was good. Reminded Bucky of Bucharest. He liked turning the page, starting fresh. Dating and labeling his output. He liked his green pens, the way the ink felt like an extension of himself - green and slick and _permanent_.

He wrote his rituals and routines. Poems and prose and snippets of memories. Things that seemed poetic when he scribbled them down, curled up at Steve’s feet in the mornings, leaning into his occasional touches like a mangy cat, trawling for affection. Steve pretended he wasn’t desperate to see what was in the notebook, sitting all casual-like. An actor in a play who wasn’t very good at it but his cousin was the director so whaddaya gonna do, right?

Steve. So _nonchalant_ with his novel as though Bucky didn’t know him inside and out. Of course, he did. Bucky knew the parts of him that wanted to see what was written down in green ink more than he wanted food, or water, or the breath in his lungs.

Bucky kept the notebook tucked under the mattress when he wasn’t using it. He had briefly considered putting it beneath the floorboards with the mask but had worried about jealousy. On which object’s part, he wasn’t sure.

Maybe himself. Being the object.

Less of an object, though, this week. More himself. Steve had been in a good mood since Sam, and Bucky had been in his head. His _own_ head, and his own heart, pumping blood through his own veins and his own body.

(Of course there was always his-not-his arm, but that at least had been made especially for him by somebody who liked him. Not like the old arm. The one left to rust in the snow and the ice of Siberia.

Maybe Tony had brought that arm back. Put it in a lab. Grew tiny Buckies from it and executed them one by one.

A concerning thought. He wrote it in the book.)

Now it was Tuesday again, and a good Tuesday. Natasha was coming to dinner, and he was at his rescheduled appointment with Doc.

Doc was saying something. Bucky couldn’t focus, so he interrupted her, which was rude.

“Do you think it’s abnormal,” he said, real fingers drumming on the arm of the cloud chair. “When people want weird shit in bed? Or is that like...an average day for you?”

Doc recovered from being interrupted, smiling and sitting back. “People have preferences. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“But what if…” he frowned, making a fist, so he didn’t pick at his nail. “I think Steve thinks I’m fucked up.”

“Why?”

Bucky squirmed. Flayed open like a worm on a dissection tray because sometimes he found it oddly soothing to watch bizarre things on the Internet.

“Because I want some of that weird shit.”

“What do you define as weird shit?”

“Uh.” Hard to say. Harder to want. There they were. “Hold me down? Not choke me but…” Cut off the air and let his brain restart. Stop thinking, only _being_ \- being Steve’s.

Doc’s face was neutral, though Bucky went looking. Dug deep to find the judgment. The way maybe she thought he was sick. Didn’t see it.

“Is it masochistic? Do you want Steve to physically hurt you?”

No. The notion of Steve holding a stick or a stun baton made him want to pull his guts out through his nose. Pluck his eyeballs from his skull so he couldn’t see it happening. Rip his tongue out so he couldn’t scream in protest. No. Not _hurt_.

“Not hurt.”

“Then what is it that appeals to you?”

Bucky frowned, chin dropping to his chest, a curtain of hair around his face. “Being Steve’s? Having him think, so I don’t. I’m always thinking _so much_.”

“I know you are.” She leaned forward, and Bucky tensed because sometimes she did that when she was going to ask a question that might bother him. Didn’t know she did it. “Bucky, did something happen?”

He huffed. Stuck his tongue against the frenum of his upper lip and wiggled it back and forth just to feel the muscle move. “Kind of. He didn’t like it.”

Doc crossed and uncrossed. Heels were pink canvas sandals with a floral print today. He could see her toes. Wasn’t warm enough for sandals but Doc was a unique lady, and she could wear them if she wanted to. She had pretty good toes, as far as toes go. He wondered if her husband had noticed what good toes she had. If her husband was kind to her the way Steve was kind to Bucky. If they laughed together and cooked together, maybe with their daughter. If her husband knew Doc had the kind of job where guys like Bucky came to her for help.

“I won’t press you for details,” she said, so he couldn’t look at her sandals anymore. “However, anything you want to tell me, you know I’m happy to listen.”

“Thanks.”

“As for what you do or don’t do with Steve - I think you know what I’m going to say here, don’t you?”

Bucky frowned. “We _talk_.” They talked all the time. Talked about the weather, the dogs in the park. If the toaster was doing its sole job poorly (yes), if Steve hit every branch of the ugly tree when he fell out of it (only half), if Bucky wanted a knuckle sandwich (no, just peanut butter Steve, thanks).

“Talk more,” Doc said. “Specifically about this. We could roleplay if you want. Practice a scenario?”

Bucky gawped at her. That was officially the dumbest thing he’d ever heard in the future.

Thirty-seven minutes later, he walked through the front door of the brownstone. He could hear Natasha’s distinctive cackle from the living room, followed by Steve’s familiar-not-familiar chuckle. Steve hadn’t chuckled before, other-Bucky remembered. He’d brayed like a donkey and honked like a vengeful goose in those memories. No low, bemused chuckles there.

Probably the other Avengers didn’t take kindly to donkeys and geese. Bucky didn’t mind them.

“In here, Buck,” Steve called because apparently, he thought Bucky had gone deaf or infirm in the one hundred and four minutes he’d been gone. Idiot.

He followed the sound of Steve’s voice and found Natasha and Steve upside-down. On their backs, sort of. Pushed up into a pose that looked like a bridge, hands and feet on the ground.

“Hi,” he said, wondering if he should turn upside down, too. Natasha was looking at him with an upside-down face, so her smile was a frown. Bucky frowned in response and Natasha mimicked him, corners of her mouth turning down so now it was a smile from his perspective. “You guys look ridiculous.”

“It’s yoga,” Natasha replied. “Wheel pose. You should try it.”

“Can’t.” Bucky didn’t like it, the upside-down bending. He could bend that way, sure, but he didn’t _want_ to. Didn’t want his spine to get out of joint because then Steve would have to pop his parts back into place.

Watching them was making him itchy - hot under the collar as he imagined Steve with a snapped back. Ribs poking out through his chest so Bucky could break them off one by one. “Can you...not?”

Natasha and Steve exchanged an upside-down glance before Natasha stood with the grace of a lynx, one swift movement and she was stretching her arms up up up over her head, so her shirt rode up and exposed the mark Bucky had left on her a long time ago.

Bucky looked away.

Steve lowered himself to the ground, crossing his legs and using the strength in them to push himself to his feet. Not a lynx but a horse, maybe - graceful, yes, but practical. Useful. No frills. Just muscle and speed and power.

Bucky went to him, and Steve’s arms draped around his shoulders, squeezing him tight. He could feel Steve and Natasha looking at each other over his head. Probably having an Eyebrow Conversation.

 _This is new?_ Natasha’s carefully groomed brows would query.

 _He was fine before_ , Steve’s bushy caterpillar brows would respond.

 _Fucking lost cause, that one_ because Natasha’s brows wouldn’t have time for Bucky’s bad day, even if Natasha the person didn’t mind.

His-not-his arm hugged Steve tighter while his right arm searched for Natasha. Pulled her into his side when he found her. Loved her and remembered her even if he didn’t know how to _tell_ her just what he remembered.

Her small hand was on his back, rubbing slow circles. Bucky let out a sigh. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Wheel...made me think about something else.”

“Noted,” Natasha said, as though it was a preference, dietary or otherwise. “No wheel pose for Bucky. Let’s see how you do with a sun salutation.”

Bucky pulled back from their dual embrace and looked all the way down at her. “The fuck’s a sun salutation?”

Steve left them to it, proclaiming he was hungry and ordering dinner, which was a safer proposition than letting him cook. Natasha, meanwhile, showed Bucky how to salute the sun. Turned out, he liked it fine. Liked bending in half and reaching up and lunging. Liked sticking his ass in the air and making Natasha roll her eyes like he was being funny. He wasn’t _trying_ to be funny, except for a little bit he was.

Yoga wasn’t relaxing, exactly, but it let him feel his body - the sinews and the joints. The way his bones moved under his skin. The pleasant stretch in places he’d neglected in this, his dotage. The sunset of his life.

Doc might call it progress. Bucky simply liked making his body do what he told it to do.

They had moved on to down dog by the time the doorbell rang with the food. Steve paid for the delivery over the sound of Bucky’s yelping “aw-aw-aroo!” and Natasha’s shrieks of delight. Why, Bucky wondered, would someone name it down dog if they didn’t want people to commit to the whole dog thing? Plus, making Natasha laugh was one of his singular pleasures in this new life. When Natasha laughed - when she really, _really_ laughed - it was as though she was making up for lost time. His hyena, his jackdaw - a kettle boiling on the hob.

“You two done?” Steve asked. Bucky couldn’t see him from that angle, but he could hear the dumb, fond look on his face.

Natasha was trying to catch her breath, sucking big mouthfuls of air into her lungs as Bucky flopped bonelessly onto the rug. He smiled up at her and raised an eyebrow. “Whatcha think, Toots? We done?”

(Toots - other-Bucky’s father had called his mother Toots, he was _sure_ of it.)

“Done,” Natasha said, reaching out a hand to haul Bucky up.

“Delivery guy’s probably gonna call the cops,” Steve said, as they sat down at the table together. “Musta thought a rabid dog was murdering an uh…”

“Asthmatic porn star?” Natasha supplied.

“Out of tune opera singer?” Bucky offered.

“Neither of you are funny.”

Natasha shrugged and handed Bucky his dumplings. “We’re hilarious.”

They weren’t bad - had a whole floor show worked out between them. Real Vaudevillians. Three of a kind, line ‘em up, who’s on first? People thought Natasha wasn’t funny, but people didn’t know Natasha.

Dinner was always good when Natasha was around. Bucky stayed in his head, didn’t worry about being real or not real because only real could laugh like that. Only real could grin like his face was going to split apart at the seams or freeze that way. Happy even when he was sad in a rictus of joy because Steve and Natasha made him so fucking happy.

When dinner was over, Bucky and Steve insisted Natasha didn’t have to help clean up because she was a _guest_ , so she said they were idiots. They made her go out to the living room while they worked anyway.

“Good day?” Steve asked once they were alone, hip-checking him as he passed by to load something into the dishwasher. Bucky liked the dishwasher because it always did very efficient work, but sometimes he wished it had a clear front, like the oven, so he could sit and watch it do its job.

Bucky shrugged, and Natasha started singing something off-key and Slavic in the living room which was probably their punishment. “Yeah, pretty good.”

“Just so long as I’m not doing a backbend, huh?”

Bucky scrubbed harder at a persistent spot of grease on the countertop. “It’ll snap your spine.”

“It won’t snap my spine.”

“It _might_.” The rebuke came out harsher than he’d intended, rough guard dog growl reverberating in his mouth. Steve closed the dishwasher and came to him, knocking his forehead against Bucky’s temple and bringing one of his big hands up to hold Bucky’s neck.

Holding his neck, really holding it. Pressing his thumb against Bucky's Adam’s apple, digging in, and Bucky could feel his heart in his mouth, his whole body numb save for the pressure. He swallowed. Swallowed again. Closed his eyes.

“It _won’t_ ,” Steve repeated.

Bucky turned and hid his face against Steve’s broad shoulder, hand rhythmically squeezing the sponge, though the texture was only half as much comfort as Steve’s hand on his neck had been. Too _much_ , too good - everything he was too afraid to ask for.

So he asked instead: “do they make dishwashers with clear doors?”

If the question surprised him, Steve didn’t show it. Just took the sponge from Bucky’s hand and led him to the living room where the three of them sat on the couch and looked at videos of the insides of dishwashers on the internet until Natasha got an emergency text. Big emergency - Sam had taken a plastic bat to the knee from a five-year-old with lousy aim and her assistance was required at home.

“See you Saturday?” she asked Steve as they walked her to the door.

“Saturday.”

Bucky was moderately curious, but not curious enough to ask. Steve and Natasha did lots of weird shit on their own because they were weird friends, and Steve was entitled to that privacy. Plus, part of him preferred not knowing, for peace of mind reasons.

Natasha left with a promise to send them photographs of Sam’s grievous injury. Forty-five minutes later Steve and Bucky’s phones both lit up with a picture of Sam’s regular looking knee.

Bucky sent back a crying baby emoji, and Natasha returned a middle finger along with a (FROM SAM) in all-caps.

Steve and Bucky were still smiling when they went to bed, which made it all the more disappointing when Bucky woke up outside himself at three in the morning.

His body fell out of bed and onto the floor, worms crawling in his eyeballs, so everything was fuzzy. Full of patterns and holes, and holes, and he was full of _holes_. Standing above his broken body, he could look down and see them growing and growing, porous and wet, slimy, oozing the grease that kept him moving. All the gears under his skin whirring and spinning. Grinding his insides up into a paste. Nothing human and nothing real. Grotesque sack of rotten meat and broken parts.

He was inside himself and outside of himself. Inside and he was vomiting into the wastebasket by the bed. There was a warm hand on his back, and he could see the sick coating a used condom and the sports section of the Times.

“...alright, Buck, just a dream. You’re alright, you’re here.”

“Not,” he croaked.

“Not what?”

“Not.”

Steve left him, and Bucky moaned, losing what grasp he had on his surroundings. Floated out into the ether and it was dark.

Then Steve was back with a washcloth and water that tasted like what he thought engine oil must taste like.

“Good, pal, just drink that,” Steve said. Bucky did.

Bucky chanced a glance while he was inside his body. Steve didn’t look angry like he sometimes did when these things happened - when Bucky split down the middle into two halves and watched himself fall apart. Steve looked sad now. Confused.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you.” Steve took the water away, put it on the nightstand. Pulled Bucky onto the bed and stretched his perfectly big body across Bucky’s and _oh_ he could feel that. Could feel his whole self not just his half-self as Steve pressed him into the mattress and forced him to settle. “You good with this?”

No words. Keening noise instead, arms rigid at his sides so Steve could hold him _everywhere_.

“You’re right here, you know?” Steve said like he knew what Bucky was thinking. And it wasn’t right - not _quite_ right- but Steve was trying. “Not anywhere else except here with me.”

Wasn’t about the _where_ , it was about the _what,_ but Steve didn’t know that and Bucky couldn’t say it. There were tears on his cheeks, and Steve kissed them away. Bucky took in a sharp breath and felt his heart lub-dub its presence. Real.  

“Love you, Bucky. I’m right here with you.”

Bucky drew in a ragged breath, sob caught in his raw throat. He _was_ there, and he was Steve’s, all his shattered pieces. He closed his eyes and drank it in. Fell asleep with Steve holding him down.

It was the first time he’d ever been able to fall back to sleep after an episode. Wasn’t nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has been leaving comments - I'm down with a sinus infection right now and am slow to respond. I will get to them all, I promise. They're so appreciated, and make my day!


	6. Part of a composite

“That’s going to chafe.”

It took a moment for Natasha’s words to register. Steve looked up, holding her foot in one hand, the other tugging on the length of standing line he had left after completing what he thought was a half-decent single column tie.

“What?”

“On the inside of my ankle, the rope’s twisted. It’s going to chafe.”

Steve took in a long, steady breath before letting it out in a measured exhale, undoing the tie. It was his fifth attempt - the first had been too loose, the second too tight. The third was somehow both at the same time, which didn’t make any sense at all. The fourth wasn’t bad, but Natasha was a cruel taskmaster and had insisted he try again. Now, the fifth: twisted. Chafing.

Natasha had taken to the ruse with her usual delight for anything strange Steve subjected her to, accompanying him to the class in a blonde wig and glasses to go with Steve’s schlumpy hoodie and genuinely hideous mustache. Natasha had insisted upon the latter, saying it would help him blend in.

(“You’ll be an everyman,” she had said, sitting up on the bathroom counter and using some sort of theatrical adhesive to affix the brushy caterpillar to his face.

“You don’t think it’s a bit...fake?”

“Million bucks, Steve.”

Sam, who had been passing by the bathroom door, took one look at the both of them, muttered something about being tested, and went on his way. Steve liked to think he was mostly sad that Natasha got to go to bondage class while he was stuck at home.)

Steve corrected the tie and Natasha nodded. “Better. Best one yet, actually.”

“Gee, you really think so?” He tugged on the rope, pulling her foot up enough that he could tickle the underside, which earned him a vicious kick to the shoulder. Didn’t hurt. “Rate I’m going, it’ll only take me another seventy years before I can try it on Bucky.”

“How not-at-all hyperbolic of you.” Natasha leaned back on the mat, half-smile on her face as she looked around at the other couples in the room. There was a range of ability, though even the best were beginners. Steve wished some of them would take it a bit more seriously - it was hard to get anything accomplished when everyone was laughing all the time. “Anyway, I know you too well. You’re going to get obsessed with this, read everything you can, practice ties on table legs and you’ll be hogtying me by next weekend.”

Steve made a face. “I’m not doing that.”

“Why?” she countered, stretching her arms above her head and wriggling on her back like a lazy snake. “Hogties aren’t hard.”

Steve wondered if she knew from professional experience, or personal, before banishing the thought. “Because I’m not...that’s not…”

Natasha sniffed, rolling to her feet and looking down at him with an expression that set him squirming. “I’m getting water.”

She brought him back a bottle right around the time the instructor started teaching them two-column ties. It was frustrating, only learning two things in an hour, but if his theory about Bucky bore out, the end result would be worth it.

When class was over, they got lunch at a nearby diner, which Natasha liked because of the milkshakes and Steve liked because the meatloaf reminded him of his mother’s. Once there was food on the table, Natasha turned to him with a grin. Steve had a feeling she wasn’t going to ask about politics.

“So,” she said, dipping a single french fry into her milkshake before popping it into her mouth. “Why aren’t you bringing Bucky to these classes?”

Damn Natasha. Steve’s face warmed, betraying him as it always did. He’d explained what they were doing in theory beforehand, and Natasha had been kind enough not to delve into the details. Because she was the sort of friend who would accompany you on any mission, no questions asked. Or, as it turned out, no questions asked until the mission was complete.

“It, uh.” He cleared his throat. “He wouldn’t want to go.” That wasn’t a lie - Bucky preferred not to break his routines, he got anxious in large groups of people, and he hated drawing any sort of attention to himself in public.

“Mmm.” Natasha cocked her head to the side. “Does he know what we’re doing?”

Dead to rights, as usual. “He does not, no.”

“Which leads me to the conclusion,” she continued, reaching across the table and stealing an onion ring. “This is for a surprise, but you have had...some indication that he’s amenable to the concept.”

Talking was easier when it was Sam telling him _not_ to discuss his sex life.

“It’s complicated.”

Natasha ate her onion ring, letting the idea percolate, her brain running countless scenarios. Her life was an endless game of chess - one in which she had to continually be twelve moves ahead of her opponents. Steve empathized. Their gifts manifested themselves differently, but he knew what it was to never stop strategizing.

“I’m happy to run the mission with you,” she said. “But you need to consider that I’m built differently. He’s got all the scarring around the arm, you know his back hurts him, and his shoulder…”

Of course, he knew. He knew every inch of Bucky - the aches and pains borne out of nearly a century of abuse, the muscle spasms, and the scars. “Yeah, no kidding, but he’s not going to want to come and…”

“I know. But when you do your extracurricular work, throw in a couple anatomy books. Figure out how to do it in a way that gives him what he _wants_.”

The emphasis on the word was intentional, and Steve tried not to scowl. Bucky had said what he wanted, in a manner of speaking.

“I know what he wants,” he muttered.

“Steve.” Natasha’s voice was kind, and she reached across the table to cover his hand with her own. “What he thinks he _needs_ and what he _wants_ are very different things. Take it from someone who knows.”

He looked up, and his eyes caught on a loose strand of synthetic hair from the wig, stuck awkwardly to her temple. It reminded him of how many people she had been - how many people she _could_ be. Yet she trusted him with her secrets and more than that, she trusted him with herself. That trust was a gift, and sometimes he forgot he could trust her in return.

“When I feel good about it,” he conceded. “When I’m really good at it, I’ll ask him. There’s no point making him worry about something that I might never get the hang of.”

Natasha pulled her hand back and reached for her fork, a smile playing on her lips. “You will.”

As with most things, Natasha was correct. Steve’s dogged determination to see things through, coupled with his eidetic memory, saw him spending the next few weeks devoted to learning everything he could about bondage, sex, and power.

What he learned, funnily enough, was that throughout all sorts of scenarios, communication with one’s partner was the most important part of play. The message was reinforced by Natasha in class and by Sam at lunch. Steve had been called pig-headed a time or two in his life, but the lack of subtlety from the universe was wearing.

As it happened, the final message from the universe came one Saturday night, only hours after Steve had returned home from his fifth class. Bucky was straddling him on the couch, kissing him open-mouthed and messy, which had been their favorite way of kissing since they were sixteen.

“Why’s there glue on your lip?” Bucky muttered, separating from Steve with a wet smack and reaching up two fingers to pull off what was left of the adhesive that had held Steve’s mustache in place.  

“Uh. Disguise.” Bucky knew he was going out with Natasha, after all. Disguises weren’t unheard of.

Bucky stuck the glue to his own upper lip and Steve didn’t comment. “What do you two do every week, anyway?”

Interesting. Bucky hadn’t exhibited any real curiosity about what he and Natasha got up to before, which suited Steve fine. But he had made himself a promise, after Siberia, that he wouldn’t ever lie to Bucky. Not when Bucky had spent more than a lifetime being lied to.

Still, the universe could have been slightly more nuanced.

“We’re going to a class.”

“What class?”

Heaven help him. “It is. A class about, uh. Bondage. How to…”

Bucky cut him off. “You’re going to a _bondage_ class?” His tone was so incredulous that Steve couldn’t help laughing.

“Sounds dumb when you say it like that.”

“Why?”

“Why does it sound dumb?”

“ _Steve_.” Bucky’s hand fisted in his hair, tugging. Steve moved with him, turning his head and pressing a quick kiss to Bucky’s wrist.

“Because I thought you might like it if we tried it.”

Bucky released his hold on Steve’s hair, sitting back on his lap and looking very much like a confused cocker spaniel. Steve’s confused cocker spaniel.

“You said…” Steve continued, wishing he could make any conversation natural like Sam, or plainly state facts like Natasha. “When we talked about the closet shit, you said you liked wearing the coat because it felt like being close to me. And then, when...uh, when we had the bad night when I got mad. You said you wanted to feel your heart beating.”

Bucky didn’t say anything, though Steve could feel the tension radiating off him in waves.

“So um, I did some research, and some people said bondage helped them settle, in the way you mentioned.” Shit, it sounded stupid when he said it out loud. “And with the mask, I thought some breath restriction? I’m learning about that. Well, I’m trying. Natasha’s helping me with the bondage - I practice ties on her. I was going to tell you, but I wanted to be good at it and…”

Bucky silenced him with a needy kiss, their teeth clicking together. Steve let out a grunt of surprise, Bucky’s warm weight pinning him to the couch.

When Bucky pulled back from the kiss, he was smiling - the kind of shy, aw-shucks smile Steve hadn’t seen on him since well before the war.

“You did that for me?”

“Yes,” Steve said. “Only if you want to.”

Bucky nodded, worrying his lower lip between his teeth. “I don’t want it to hurt.”

“Oh, Buck...I wouldn’t hurt you.” He hated that pain was where Bucky’s mind had gone first. “This is about what you need. I want to help you feel uh, comfortable? Safe? It sounds silly, but I’ve been reading about it, and some people experience a sensation like they’re floating.”

“Float?”

“Like you’re there, but not there?” He didn’t have a better explanation for it, having not experienced it himself. He only had the stories, which sounded nice. Soothing.

Bucky tensed again, his lips forming the phrase “there but not there” over and over before he looked at Steve. “Sometimes,” he said, fingers twisting themselves into knots as he wrung his hands. “I’m not _in_ myself.”

“What’s that mean?” Steve had said the wrong thing - Bucky was spiraling.

Bucky got to his feet, hands giving another nervous twitch. “Can’t say right now. I need to think about it. But I want to think. Can I think?”

“Of course you can. Pal, this is...it’s an option, you know? I’m not gonna be mad if you say no.”

“Uh huh.” He nodded, gaze resting anywhere but Steve. “I’m gonna, uh. Call. I gotta make a call.”

Steve managed not to frown until Bucky had left the room. The only person Bucky _ever_ called was Doc, and the fact that their conversation had spurred that sort of a check in made him feel like the world’s smallest piece of shit stuck to the world’s shiniest shoe.

Bucky stayed on the phone for nearly thirty minutes. Once the conversation was through, he acted as though nothing was wrong, refusing to broach the topic. Steve let it drop. No pressure, no worries. Whatever Bucky wanted.

It took two days. They were in bed, Steve with his sketchbook and Bucky dozing beside him. Ostensibly dozing.

“You should keep going to bondage class.” Not dozing at all.

Steve nearly dropped his pencil. “What?”

“The bondage class. Keep going. I want to try it when you’re ready.”

“Sure.” He tried to keep the surprise out of his voice. “That’s great, Bucky.”

Bucky grunted, turning onto his side. He wrapped both arms around Steve’s leg and lifted his head to place his cheek against Steve’s thigh, just below the hem of his boxers. “So uh. I gotta talk about...I’m uh. Sick?

There it was - the reflexive reaction. The horror. The worry. The tremor of fear and anxiety ripping right through Steve’s now-perfect body. Asthma, influenza, whooping cough, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, the list was endless.

 _I’m sick_ meant something more when you always had been.

But Bucky couldn’t get sick - not like that. So he willed his heart to stop attempting to escape through his mouth and forced himself to respond in a way that was somewhat resembling normal.

“What do you mean?” he asked, voice pitched higher than he’d intended.

“When I go to Doc,” he continued. “It’s for something...she calls it de-person-ating. No, depersonalization. It’s where...I’m outside of myself, sometimes.”

There but not there. No wonder Bucky had been freaked out by the sentiment. Steve was an idiot. “Alright,” he said. “Not sure I get that. Can you uh, tell me more?”

Bucky grinned, biting Steve’s thigh, though not that hard. “You sound like Doc.”

Fucking wonderful.

“I’ll try,” Bucky said. “When it happens, it’s like...there’s the me that’s here right now. This me. And there’s...another me that’s outside of that one. I can look at myself, but I’m not really there. Or I’m there, but I’m not real. Does that make sense?”

Steve didn’t lie. “Not really, Buck. But I’m trying.”

“That’s alright.” Bucky’s right shoulder pulled up into a half-shrug. “Doesn’t really make sense to me until it’s happening. And I don’t know it’s going to happen until it does.”

“And Doc’s helping you with the...other you?”

Bucky nodded, squeezing Steve’s thigh tighter. “Yes. I forget what it’s called, but it’s...modifying thought patterns. Something. Don’t remember, but it’s good.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, whether I’m me, or outside of me, or looking back at the other me.”

“The other you?” Apparently, there were three of them now.

“The Bucky from before. Your Bucky.”

Steve had taken harder hits in his life, but the gut-punch of that blow was enough to make him see stars, heart wrenched from his chest and held in front of him, bloody and beating.

“Oh, that’s...” he said, his hand moving to Bucky’s head, tracing the curve of his ear. “That’s you. You’re my Bucky.”

“Not really, though.”

“Yes, really.” Steve frowned and reached down to extricate Bucky’s vice grip from his leg, pulling him up until they were face-to-face. When he brought a hand to Bucky’s cheek, Bucky leaned into the touch, the reaction borne more of instinct than intent. “I don’t give a shit which Bucky you are. I mean it, you’re mine. Whether I gotta love three of you or ten of you or...a million of you. However many you got in there, I love ‘em.”

Bucky blinked, his face splitting into a grin. “It’s not multiple personalities, Steve. I checked with Doc.”

It was hard not to match Bucky grin for grin, even if it was a shit-eating one. Steve rolled his eyes, pulling him into a hug and squeezing him as tight as he could, waiting for the moment when he went limp, pliant and content. “I’m trying here, asshole. I’m learning.”

Bucky hummed low in his throat, one arm snaking around Steve’s midsection and squeezing right back. “I know. But just...you still like me, right?”

He kissed the top of Bucky’s head, breathing in the peppermint shampoo he insisted on buying. “I love you. That’s better than like.”

“No,” Bucky shook his head. “Obligated to love me. Like’s because you like me.”

Steve released him from the hug and studied his face, realizing quickly Bucky was genuinely concerned with the difference. “Pal, I like you fine. A lot. Even when you’re obnoxious.”

Another face-splitting grin before Bucky leaned in and kissed his forehead. “Never obnoxious. So you’re gonna tie me up?”

Steve had nearly forgotten the entire reason they were having the conversation, and it took a moment for his brain to process the question. “I uh. Yes, of course. We’ll figure out the details.”

Bucky nodded, satisfied, and scooted back down to his original position with his head on Steve’s thigh. Once he’d settled, Steve pressed a hand to his temple, ostensibly to stroke his hair but mostly to anchor him in place. Hold him close. Keep all the parts that made him Bucky still and safe, right there with him.

He had his answer; now they had to make a plan.


	7. It's here, it's bright, it's now

Steve made dinner on the night in question. Didn’t even burn it, which Bucky appreciated because Steve burnt everything. Even things that didn’t _go_ in the oven and then he’d blame the toaster, but the toaster was only doing its job.

The roasted chicken was a distraction. Bucky liked that it was dry - the way the protein felt gritty on his tongue. No reminders about how it used to be a bird. The baked potato was underdone. Broccoli had been boiled past the point of palatability.

On the whole, it was one of Steve’s better meals.

“You don’t have to finish the potato.”

Bucky glanced up from where he’d been diligently forking the not-very-soft starch into his mouth. “Huh?”

“It’s raw in the center, Buck. Don’t eat it.”

“...but you made it.”

Lips quirking up into a smile, Steve pushed his broccoli around. The vegetable was leaking, water pooling on the plate making it soggier still. Bucky touched his tongue to the roof of his mouth in sympathy.

“Doesn’t mean you have to eat it.”

“But you _made_ it.”

“Yeah, well, what I made might make us sick,” Steve replied before standing up and clearing the plates. Decision made and Steve was making the decisions. Bucky could see the veins running under the skin of Steve’s hands; bone and sinew and muscle, every part perfectly synchronized for whatever task he set himself.

Spatchcocking the chicken. Clearing the table. Tying Bucky up.

All things happening in a row. Currently. Really, really happening.

Hence the chicken.

Steve - a romantic - was attempting a date. Bucky appreciated the playacting of normalcy. Gave him something to focus on. It was easier to think about how sweet and ridiculous Steve was than be worried about everything going wrong in a hundred thousand different ways.

Nothing was going to go wrong. Steve had a plan.

Steve was the man with a plan. Man with the plan? A man with a plan? Didn’t matter. Steve had said he’d take care of it. Said Bucky didn’t have to worry.

The previous Tuesday, Steve had asked him for the mask all casual. Like it was a regular thing to want.

 

_“Say, fucked-up ol’ buddy ol’ pal ol’ Bucky, can I get ahold of that there torture-mask you’ve been keeping from me?”_

_“Well gosh of course you can, sunshine precious love-of-my-life, this century and the last. Try not to judge a fella for hiding it under the floorboards of his room like an overgrown rat building a nest of half-eaten memories and garbage.”_

_“Heaven forfend, my broken part. Thanks ever so much, chum.”_

 

Bucky was pretty sure the conversation hadn’t gone _precisely_ that way, mostly because Steve had never called him chum before.

Bucky had checked under the floorboards every day since then to make sure the mask was really gone. That Steve had really asked. All part of the plan they’d made. The big plan. The not-at-all-spontaneous but _kind of_ spontaneous plan.

“You with me?”

Bucky looked up. Steve was standing by the table, dish towel in hand.

“Uh huh.”

“Kinda thinking you’re not, Buck,” he chided, too kind to be cruel.

“I’m...with you _mostly_ ,” he said after a moment’s consideration. The past few weeks he’d been working with Doc and Steve on saying what he meant to say, even if what he said didn’t come out the way his brain shaped it into being.

Steve looked him up and down like he’d be able to tell what Bucky’s head looked like on the inside if he studied the outside hard enough. Bucky squirmed. Steve smiled and held out a hand.

“C’mon,” Steve said. “Let’s go play.”

Bucky laughed, the sound jarring in his mouth. The phrase was incongruous with the images of rattling chains and dark, dank underground rooms. Rooms he _knew_ didn’t exist in their little brownstone. Rooms that existed in another lifetime. Another place. Another man.

Playing sounded better. He could play.

He slipped his hand into Steve’s, let himself be pulled up and away from the table. Down the hall and into the second bedroom, which Steve had barred him from earlier in the week. They had agreed to use the second bedroom because there were no associations there. Just an ugly, floral bedspread they’d picked up secondhand.

It looked different now. Bucky stepped in then stepped back, only to find his way blocked by two hundred some odd pounds of pectorals.

“Um.”

“Yeah. Take a second.”

There was a metal ring threaded through a bolt in the ceiling. Another set of screws only a foot away from the first anchoring a metal bar in place. A blanket on the bed covering things Bucky couldn’t see. The heavy curtains drawn over the windows, save for one which was pulled back just enough to show him how dark it was in their backyard, rain lashing the glass. Inside was warm, the only light coming from candles which had been strategically placed. Steve the tactician.

It was too much. Too _nice_. His breath hitched, and he turned, only to be caught in Steve’s grip, holding him tight to his chest until Bucky’s heart wasn’t fluttering quite so hard against his ribcage.

“Alright?” Steve asked eventually. Bucky focused on Steve’s hand, how he had placed it just under Bucky’s shirt. How it felt against his skin, stroking small, easy circles. He was alright. He was.

“Yes,” he said.

“Good, Buck.”

Steve retook his hand, bringing him into the room. Right underneath that metal ring. Bucky closed his eyes, and Steve leaned in to kiss him. Lips barely brushing together while Steve’s hands tugged at flimsy cotton.

“Arms up,” Steve said, and it wasn’t a request.

Bucky shivered but did as he was told, lifting his arms and closing his eyes the way he always did. Afraid that this time would be the time Steve recoiled. This time he would really see the weals and scars, disgusted by the marks seared into Bucky by his former masters.

“Fuckin’ handsome guy,” Steve said instead, and then his lips were pressing right to the seam between what was real and what was his-not-his. He could feel it a little.

“No,” Bucky said, twisted up into knots, the components that composed him starting to slip and then Steve was there again, twining a hand into his hair and tugging. Forcing him to look. Forcing him to see.

“No?” he asked. “Not handsome? Or you don’t want me to say that?”

“Don’t...I don’t know. But it’s hard to be both?”

Steve hummed, which Bucky was learning to recognize as an I-don’t-get-it-but-let’s-pretend-I-do noise. “We’ll leave it for now,” he said. “Want to try a harness?”

Bucky wanted to try anything Steve wanted to try, so he nodded.

Steve went to the bed and pulled back the blanket. Came back with a few bundles of purple rope - _hanks_ of rope. (Steve had been explaining terminology until Bucky wanted to put his head under the couch and live inside of it.)

Nimble fingers untied the hank and shook out the rope. Steve began running the line through a closed fist, untwisting. Bucky couldn’t take his eyes off it. Nylon but not-normal nylon. Something strong enough for him and he didn’t know how Steve had gotten it, didn’t know who he’d talked to, but it wasn’t Bucky’s _job_ to know so he bit back a whine and watched.

Maybe Steve noticed, maybe not. Kept working, fingers doubling the rope, finding the middle (“the bight” God Steve was boring sometimes), coming around behind him and hooking his chin over Bucky’s right shoulder.

“This one’s gonna look kinda like my shield harness,” he said. “You like that, right?”

“Like it on you.”

Steve smiled. Kissed his neck. Got to work doing something. It was hard to tell. Bucky could feel his hands, feel the rope. Did what he was told - lifted his arms, moved them, felt the restriction as the rope bit into his skin. No, not _bit_. Bites would hurt. The rope was light, silken. Which was a stupid word but there they were. Out of adjectives.

“How’s that feel?” Steve asked, tugging on the rope behind him, which made Bucky’s arms pull back in the sockets. Grunting, he looked down, twisting his head and finding the purple wound around both his shoulders. If the tugging was any indication, the rope crisscrossed his back and gave Steve a handle.

“Good,” he said. “Secure.”

“Does it hurt, or pinch anywhere?”

“No,” he replied without thinking, then thought about it. Maybe not. Maybe one place right where there was a divot and his skin didn’t match his shoulder. Where they’d cut out too big a piece. He was supposed to talk to Steve. That was the rule. They’d been talking for a month, more than before. Being honest while Steve went to class and Bucky went to Doc. Wasn’t meant to endure, meant to _play_. “Well. Yes. It’s…” he brought his right hand up to point out the spot. “There.”

“Thank you, Buck.” Steve adjusted the rope. It felt better.

Steve ran his hands over Bucky’s shoulders. Both shoulders. Kissed the back of his neck, nose pushing through the hair until skin touched skin and Bucky squirmed.

“So here’s the thing,” Steve continued, breath tickling. Bucky wanted to hold still, wanted to scream. It was good. “The rope...I want you to think of it as an extension of me, alright? Anywhere it’s touching you, I’m touching you. Like the coat.”

The rope felt different when Steve said so. Warm like Steve’s hands but not as rough. Maybe the best version of those hands. The ones covered in charcoal, straddling other-Bucky on a thin mattress. Those hands planted on other-Bucky’s perfect chest leaving dull gray streaks down his torso. Messed him up good. Marked him as Steve’s.

“Like charcoal,” Bucky agreed.

Steve laughed, nose bumping Bucky’s skin before pulling back. “What?”

“Dunno. Something from before. I like how it feels, though.”

“Good. Hold still a second.”

Bucky went still as a statue. Marble and bone and Steve, the sculptor with his chisel in hand, carving him out of the rock like he’d always been there waiting.

Steve went to the bed and lifted the blanket. When he turned around he was holding the mask instead of a chisel so Bucky couldn’t be a statue anymore. A breath hitched in his throat, and the gears in his head whirred in alarm. Steve was _holding_ it, and he knew it was going to happen. Knew it, knew it, knew it but _happening_ was different than knowing.

“So, this can go a couple of ways,” Steve said, watching Bucky. Bucky followed the mask with his eyes.

“Couple of ways,” he agreed.

Steve smiled, stepping closer. Bucky didn’t flinch because he didn’t have to flinch with Steve. “We can use this, or I can use my hand - ”

“Both.” Bucky’s mouth worked before his brain caught up, the instinct pure and the desire strong. Wanted both. Wanted proof. Wanted his trust borne out.

There was the barest hint of hesitation in Steve as he stepped closer still. Moved behind Bucky and lifted the rigid cage to muzzle him. Too much and not enough.

“Steve?” he choked out, voice hitching. Steve pulled the mask away, an arm around Bucky’s torso, hand on his stomach, squeezing him.

“It’s alright, we don’t have to.”

“No, it’s…” Bucky took a deep breath. Felt his heart thud in his ears three times. “Once it goes on, I don’t want to have to talk. Please?”

Spontaneous. Hadn’t been in the plan. Bucky had a word to use in case he left his head behind and went somewhere that wasn’t good or safe. Wasn’t real. But when faced with the cage and the confinement, Bucky didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to say anything because it wasn’t about what he _said_. It was about what Steve did.

Steve’s thumb traced the hard ridges of Bucky’s abdomen, muscles under the skin twitching in response to the stimulus. Real.

Except Steve was pulling away and Bucky had fucked it up. Fucked it up and now they were done, and Steve was done with him. Twisting his head, he sought Steve out, only to be reminded of the pull of rope against his shoulders. Steve’s touch because he’d put it there. Put him there.

“I’m still there, Buck,” Steve assured him. Bucky dropped his chin to his chest and focused on that reality.

There was a touch on his-not-his arm, Steve lifting it and pressing something into the hand. Metal scraping metal. Looking down, he saw a thin, ridged bolt sitting there and curled his-not-his fingers around it. Could feel the pressure, not the texture. Liked it better that way.

Steve lifted the hand. Pressed a kiss to it like it belonged to him which Bucky guessed it did if all of Bucky belonged to him, but probably they should check about patents.

“You don’t have to talk,” Steve said. “If you want to stop, drop the bolt on the ground.”

Bucky wondered where he’d gotten the bolt. Wondered if it had come from the work Steve had been doing in this room. Drilling and scraping and sanding and installing the hardware. Or - _probably_ \- it was a part of Bucky. Something he’d dropped. Something inside of him coming apart because he hadn’t put himself back together properly and -

“You’re right here.” Steve’s voice cut through. There was a warm hand on his chest, tapping out a rhythm in time with Bucky’s heartbeat and then the mask was on his face. Fastened in place and it wasn’t too tight but wasn’t so loose that things were easy. He could feel it digging in. _Had to_ feel it digging in.

Bucky closed his eyes. Steve hugged him tightly one time before going to fetch more rope.

It was easy for Bucky to be quiet when he was watching Steve work. Steve was real professional-like, so the classes were probably paying off. Classes and conversation coinciding to maybe make it better.

It _was_ better.

Steve knew now, and he liked Bucky anyway. Liked fixing broken things, only Bucky wasn’t a broken part. Just a broken person. Tougher to mend but less chance of a permanent malfunction.

Bucky was held in suspense when Steve started the suspension, malleable under his hands and the endless lengths of rope wound through the harness, up to the metal ring, back down and up and in and out until Bucky was held fast. Feet on the floor and if he leaned back Steve’s good work would catch him. Hold him up and keep him steady.

Steve made him a belt out of the rope, wrapping it through the loops of Bucky’s worn, dark jeans several times, then used the last of it to secure Bucky’s real hand to his waist. Dropping to his knees, Steve kissed Bucky’s fingers, one by one, until the tension bled from every digit and Bucky flexed his hand so he could stroke Steve’s cheek. Smiled beneath the mask and hoped Steve could see it in his eyes when he rose to his feet again.

“Hi,” Steve greeted, once they were face-to-face. Bucky waggled the fingers of his bound hand and Steve noticed. Made him laugh. “I’m gonna try something a little tricky. You’re still good?”

Dumb question. Bucky nodded.

It was hard to follow what Steve was doing from his vantage point. The rope wound around his thighs time and time again until Steve was satisfied. Lifted Bucky’s leg and bent it back, wrapping the line around his calf and thigh together. Made it look like he didn’t have a leg below the knee. There was a noise low in his throat and then Steve grabbed his big toe. Wiggled it.

Bucky took in a sharp breath. Leg was there. Whole leg. Even the toes.

Steve finished the tie, leaving him balanced on one foot. One arm, kind-of one leg. Still fine. Steve still holding him.

“Good, Buck. Lean back for me, huh? The rope’ll catch you.”

Bucky trusted Steve, but it was hard. Hard to let himself fall. To remember that he wasn’t falling backward into something that would hurt.

The rope caught. Cradled him. Pressed against his hips and his shoulders, reminding him that he was Steve’s and nobody else’s.

Steve stepped forward. Lifted his hand and put his palm over the holes in the mask like he did it all the time. Ordinary option for an ordinary evening.

Bucky huffed out his last breath more from surprise than anything else. When he tried to draw another he couldn’t _\- couldn’t._ The pittance of air coming in around the edges of the mask not enough by half or a quarter or an eighth. His heart jumped.

Steve took his hand away. Leaned in and kissed his forehead. Went back to work.

“Kinda twisting in the wind there, pal,” Steve said like he thought he was funny, but he wasn’t. “Let’s see if we can’t settle you down.”

More rope. Around and around his left knee where it was bent, reminding him once again that he had a calf. A foot. A bottom half. Steve used a lot of rope, and when he wound it over the bar and tugged, Bucky’s leg was lifted into the air with such a swiftness that he grunted. Gasped. Didn’t drop the bolt.

Steve grinned and secured the knot. Kissed Bucky’s knee over his jeans. Tickled the bottom of his foot and Bucky squawked in protest even behind the mask, toes flexing as he kicked out.

 _Tried_ to kick out.

Couldn’t. The ropes held.

“Oh, you hate that, huh?” Steve teased. Tickled him again as Bucky’s prick swelled against the tight confines of his pants, and _shit,_ he hadn’t even been thinking about it but there it was. Late to the party and making an entrance. Show-off.

If Steve noticed, he didn’t comment. Got more rope instead. Started in on Bucky’s not-arm with determination. The fuck-you-I-got-this look in his eyes that every version of Bucky knew. The look he loved and hated in equal measure depending on what stupid shit Steve was cooking up at any given moment.

Loved it then. Loved Steve then.

Steve bound his-not-his forearm parallel with the rope attaching his leg to the ceiling. Gave him a little push, so he swung and had to fight to find his footing on the one anchor he had left.

“That’s…” Steve grinned, pleased with himself and not trying to hide it. “You feel that, Buck? You’re in there?”

Was he? Head intact, heart beating. Rope along his skin and even the pressure on the wrong arm felt like something real. He was. He _was_.

He nodded.

As if given permission, Steve stepped close and covered the mask with his hand again. Leaned in and whispered secret things in Bucky’s ear, pitched low so the angels and the saints wouldn’t hear ‘em. Kept his hand where it was until Bucky started to squirm and only then did he pull back. Smiled. Stepped away.

Bucky caught his breath while Steve went to the bed and picked up the fancy camera he’d bought for the occasion. (Goddamn artist - Steve was gonna build a darkroom in what had once been a butler’s pantry, he’d said.) He aimed the camera at Bucky and fiddled with the fancy words - apertures and shutter speeds. Took Bucky’s picture from a dozen different angles while Bucky let his head fall forward, hidden behind the curtain of his hair. Indulging in the extravagance of being held in such esteem. Seen as something worthy of regard.

Steve put the camera back on the bed eventually, though Bucky wasn’t sure how much time had passed. “Doing so well, Buck,” he murmured, stepping closer and brushing Bucky’s hair back from his face. “I think I’m gonna frame those and put ‘em in the living room. Real artistic shit for our friends.”

Bucky’s head snapped up with a glare firmly planted on his features. Steve was looking at him like a troll under a bridge, shit-eating grin on his shit-eating face. Bucky shook his head. No.

“No?” Steve said. “So maybe I should stick ‘em someplace only we can see?”

That sounded better.

“Someplace I can look, and think about you and how - gosh, what’s that word you didn’t like? Handsome?”

Another glare. Another shit-eating grin.

A lightbulb.

 _This_ was playing. Steve was playing with him.

Bucky grinned behind the mask, skin of his cheeks stretched taut against the cage before Steve’s hand was up, up, up, cutting off his air. Longer still. Long enough that there were tears in his eyes when Steve pulled his hand away.

It was hard. _He_ was hard. Steve had noticed. Smiled like a dog spotting its favorite toy, stuck his hand between Bucky’s legs. Groped him, lewd and lascivious. Just how they liked it.

“Look at me.” Easy to look when Steve sounded like the whole world would fall to its knees for him, only he’d never ask it to. Bucky looked. Steve held his gaze while popping the button on Bucky’s jeans. Ran his thumb along Bucky’s skin. Pulled it taught and ground down with his thumbnail.

Bucky grunted. Sucked in his stomach. Steve couldn’t undress him, not with the ropes around his waist. Harder this way but infinitely more rewarding when Steve roughly pushed the material to the side. Bucky’s dignity had taken harder hits. He could handle it. Steve’s rough hand wrapped around Bucky’s prick, pulling him free of the confines. The metal of the zipper was cold, but Steve’s palm was warm, and Bucky could _feel_.

Steve wasn’t gentle. Squeezed him tight and Bucky moaned, attempting to find footing on the floor, wanting to thrust his hips. No footing. Lost his balance and fell back and Steve _caught_ him. Ropes caught him. Bucky could balance, and Steve’s hand was on him, still. Pumping him - teasing him - as he settled.

“Can’t go anywhere,” Steve said, leaning in close and putting his mouth right up to the mask. Bucky could smell his breath, familiar and grounding. Not good, not bad. Just Steve. Just a thousand kisses and a million lifetimes. “Can’t leave me, Buck. Right here with me.”

Bucky wanted to kiss him but of course, he couldn’t. Steve smiled. Covered the mask with his hand while picking up the rhythm of his strokes. Movements that were syncopated with Bucky’s heartbeat. Bucky could feel himself slowing down and speeding up along with Steve’s ministrations. His parts were Steve’s parts, working in harmony to please him because he couldn’t be broken so long as he was useful. Maintained.

He needed air. Twisted his head and Steve tut-tutted. Uncovered one of the holes. Bright, quick burst of clean, sweet air before it was covered up again. Steve’s grip tightened on Bucky’s cock, and everything was two things. Two points of pressure. Two centers of gravity.

Steve allowed him three more shallow breaths, Bucky’s eyes rolling back in his head, black spots dancing in his vision as he came, prick pulsing in Steve’s hand, wet and messy and only barely on the right side of too much.

Air, then. Hand gone. Bucky sucking in huge, burning lungfuls.

His cheeks were wet. Was he crying?

Steve understood. Took Bucky’s hand even where it lay bound at his side. Leaned in and kissed his forehead. The bridge of his nose. The mask. Steve understood _everything_.

“Hey, pal,” he murmured. “Not bad for our first time out.”

Such a stupid thing to say. Such a Steve thing to say. As though Bucky had learned a new trick - balancing a treat on the tip of his nose, then waiting for Steve’s permission to scarf it down. _Such a good boy_.

Steve’s other hand was still on his prick, though the initial onslaught of pleasure had subsided to a dull roar. Bucky focused on the feeling. Whined. Tried to pull back and remembered that he couldn’t.

“Too much?”

Bucky nodded. Steve gave him another terrible smile before releasing Bucky’s still-softening cock and wiping his hand on Bucky’s trembling torso.

Asshole.

“I’m going to take this off,” he said, tapping his finger against the mask. Bucky could hear the echo reverberating in his skull.

Reaching behind him, Steve undid the straps, pulling it away and leaning in to run his tongue along the red line undoubtedly left behind on Bucky’s skin.

Weird. Weirder than Bucky, and that was saying something.

Steve tossed the mask somewhere behind them, the gesture careless. Bucky could hear it skittering along the floor. Wondered if he needed it still. Maybe he’d bury it alongside the others.

Maybe not.

Steve untied him with an efficiency that made Bucky giggle, hiding behind his hand as soon as it was freed.

“What?”

“You’re so serious,” he replied, trying to mimic Steve’s squinchy face. The way his brow furrowed and creased like a mournful ghost waiting for his long-lost love to return from the sea.

“Yeah, well, shut up.”

Bucky shut, both up and down, a smile on his face as Steve finished his work. Untied the rope and replace it with soft touches and light kisses. He pulled Bucky into a hug before taking him to bed - their bed, in their room. Got him settled and crawled in next to him. Pulled a weighted blanket over them both because the Internet said things like weighted blankets were helpful for people who sometimes weren’t inside themselves.

Lying there in Steve’s arms, Bucky had never been more inside himself. 

“Was that. Uh.” Steve cleared his throat. Arms tightened their hold.

“So good.” Words weren’t enough. Weren’t adequate.

“Were you...there, the whole time?”

It struck him that Steve didn’t _really_ understand. Probably never would. Hard to get someone else’s gray matter. But Steve was trying, and Bucky could work with that. Wasn’t afraid of being tossed out with the old, broken things Steve didn’t need cluttering up his life.

“Mostly.”

Steve squeezed until he was a vice clamping Bucky in place. Bucky grunted but didn’t object.

“Maybe we can try it again sometime?” Steve sounded unsure. Like maybe it was a one-time deal. Fire sale. Going out of business. One and done with your fucked up de-person-ating person.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “Soon.”

Steve bit down on his shoulder. Bucky yawned.

It was a start.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! You can find us on Tumblr at [notlucy](https://notlucy.tumblr.com) and [timeless-anarchy](https://timeless-anarchy.tumblr.com/). If you want to share the story, you can reblog or like the [masterpost](https://notlucy.tumblr.com/post/172970631042/hooked-into-machine). 
> 
> Extra thanks to [chemegeek](https://chemegeek.tumblr.com) and [awwtopsy](https://awwtopsy.tumblr.com) for their beta work.
> 
>  **Author's Note** : The art for this story was submitted for claiming before Marvel released any information about the arm Bucky receives in Wakanda. As such, it depicts the silver arm we're all used to from previous movies. I wanted to clear up any confusion, as the arm being Shuri's design is referenced several times within the story.


End file.
